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JULY 1953 • 35 CENTS

MERCURY — the smallest, hottest and innermost planet in our system — is
probable completely airless. Jagged cliffs rise thousands of feet above a
surface pockmarked with volcanic craters. The men pictured are scaling
one of the less formidable peaks, while their ship lies in the valley far be-
low, A Mercurian day is of the same duration as its year — 88 Earth days.

JULY 1953

WORLDS of SCIENCE FICTION

Ail Stories New and Complete

Editor: JAMES L. QUINN

Associate Editor: LARRY T. SHAW

Staff Artist: ED VALIGURSKY

Cover by Ken Fagg: A Volcanic Eruption
on Titan, Sixth Moon of Saturn

I NOVELETTES

I SMMBAK by Jock Vance

I BRINK OF MADNESS by Walt Sheldon

I SHORT STORIES

I IRRESISTIBLE WEAPON by H. B. Fyfe
I A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE by Richard O. Lewis
I CELEBRITY by James McKimmey, Jr.

I ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON by Tom Leahy
I WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS by Russell Burton
I THE LONELY ONES by Edward W. Ludwig
I PROGRESS REPORT by Mark Clifton and Alex
I Apostolides

I THE GUINEA PIGS by S. A. Lombino
s

I FEATURES

I A CHAT WITH THE EDITOR

I PERSONALITIES IN SCIENCE

I SCIENCE BRIEFS
I THE POSTMAN COMETH

I COVER PICTORIAL: Venus and Mercury

fliiminiiiuiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiituiiiiiiMUHmmmiiiiuiimiitiiiMmiininiiimimmiimumiiimiiiiimmiMiimimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiMMitiiitii^.

IF is published bi-monthly by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. Volume 2, No. 3.
Copyright 1953 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. Office of publication, 8 Lord Street,
Buffalo, New York. Entered as Second Class Matter at Post Office, Buffalo, New
York. Subscription $3.50 for 12 issues in U.S. and Possessions; Canada $4 for 12
issues; elsewhere $4.50. Allow four weeks for change of address. All stories appear-
ing in this magazine are fiction; any similarity to actual persons is coincidental.
Not responsible for unsolicited artwork or manuscripts. 35c a copy. Printed in U.S. A.

EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES, KINGSTON, NEW YORK

Next issue on sale July 10th

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A CHAT WITH
THE EDITOR

Sometimes a body gets to won-
dering just what progress really
is. In this case, my confusion is
about one of those new, super-duper
fountain pens, made by one of
America’s oldest pen and pencil
makers. The one I have in mind is
right on the desk before me. It’s a
desk pen — a pretty thing, black,
onyx-like base, magnetic marble,
which holds the penholder in any
position, and a slim, sleek, black pen
with a chrome band around the
middle. It has a truly graceful, fu-
turistic, pace-setting feel and ap-
pearance. But, boy-oh-boy-oh-boy!
That pretty thing is more trouble to
fill than an old-fashioned Saturday-
night-bath tub with an old oaken
bucket from an old time, pulley-
working dug-well.

You’ve no doubt had experiences
with one like it. If you haven’t,
here’s how it works: First, you gotta

have special ink for it — made by the
maker of the pen. Then, you un-
screw the top of the pen and find
a plunger. This plunger is special.
No once-down-and-release like the
good old-time pens of fifteen, twen-
ty or twenty-five years ago. This
special, super plunger requires nine
plunges, holding the point sub-
merged all the while. And each time
you “plunge”, you gotta allow a
couple seconds on the release for it
to suck in ink. The ninth time, you
remove it from the ink and then
release the plunger. No variations,
now, and no short cuts ! Should you
lose count because your phone rings
or something, you have to start all
over from scratch. You can’t fool
that pen!

Oh, you get used to it after a
while. All you gotta do is practice.
Like on Saturdays and Sundays and
during your lunch hour. You grad-
ually become quite proficient. I’ve
had mine for two years and I’m
pretty good. I average a penful of
ink three out of every five times I
perform the operation.

And yet, no matter how assinine
I think it is, I reckon it is probably
better than the old fashioned type
that had a little lever or plunger,
which you worked once — with your
eyes shut and without mumbling a
count and using anybody’s ink — and
you had a penful that would write a
long time. After all, that was much
too simple. Oh, yes, I’ve also got a
pocket job, with a super, trick-re-
verse vacuum method of filling, that
doesn’t take in as much ink as any
self-respecting wreck you use to fill
out money order forms in post of-
fices around the country. But it
looks nice when I take it out of my

pocket and let it rest on the table
while I borrow somebody else’s
equipment to write with.

IT WAS Mark Twain who once
said, “Everybody complains about
the weather, but nobody does any-
thing about it”. That pretty much
applies to this thing we call “time”.
You’ve heard that familiar gripe:
“Where the heck does the time go?”
Or, “How time flies!” Or, “There
ought to be more than 24 hours in
a day!” Anyhow, you get the idea.
But did you ever stop to think that
we’re putting the cart before the
horse. Time ain’t flying at all. We’re
flying. “Time” is an invention of
our civilization. It is relative to ac-
tion, movement, music, geology,
mathematics, life, etc., etc. Out in
space, out in the infinite, there is no
time — as we know it. Let the earth
change its rotation and we’d have
a heck of a “time” with our clocks,
calendars, sundials, egg cookers, etc.
Anyhow, I suppose this thought was
suggested by a line I remembered
from a swell movie I saw recently.
The movie was Breaking Through
the Sound Barrier, and the scene is
that of the test pilot looking through
a telescope, stationed in the private
observatory of a manufacturer of jet
planes. After a while of intense
watching, he says something to the
effect that in those millions of light
years out there, they are living in
the past. The manufacturer, sitting
nearby, hears him and looks up.
There is a dreamy expression on his
face. “My boy,” he said, “out there
is the past, the present, and the fu-
ture."

We make our own time. So It is
we who fly.

Breaking Through the Sound
Barrier, incidentally, is a picture
anyone interested in science, factual
or fictional, will enjoy seeing. It has
all the basic emotions, plus some
new ones. I’ve been up in planes
doing over 300 miles per hour, at
over 20,000 feet, but that was no-
where near the thrill of watching
this movie. The camera takes you
through phases of man’s breathless
quest for speed, it gives you a look-
in on the development of mighty
engines, and it introduces you to a
philosophical equation of man, na-
ture and machinery. And when the
camera takes you inside a plane
screaming through space 40,000 feet
up, hurtling life and machine
against the sound barrier— well it’s
the next best thing to actually being
up there. In fact, it’s better. Per-
sonally, you couldn’t get me up
there with a million dollar life in-
surance policy. Watching it from a
safe, comfortable seat in a movie
house was enough for me.

INCIDENTALLY, the real fun of
flying seems to me to be in these
small personal jobs. A friend of
mine has a small four-seater Stin-
son and the time he took me up I
behaved like a three-year old on
his first ride on a merry-go-round.
Flying at 90 to 100 miles per hour
at 300 to 1000 feet gives you the
excitement of contrast. You follow
roads, rivers, railroad tracks, pick
out familiar landmarks; you see life
below with a fascinating perspective
which is never possible in the big,
fast planes. Besides, to reiterate, I
never am in 600-miles-per-hour
worth of hurry. — jlq

Wilbur Murphy sought romance, excitement, and an impossi-
ble Horseman of Space. With polite smiles, the planet frus-
trated him at every turn — until he found them all the hard way!

SJAMBAK

By Jack Vance

Illustrate^ by VIRGIL FINLAY

Howard FRAYBERG, Pro-
duction Director of Know Your
Universe!, was a man of sudden un-
predictable moods; and Sam Gat-
lin, the show’s Continuity Editor,
had learned to expect the worst.

“Sam,” said Frayberg, “regarding
the show last night. . .” He paused
to seek the proper words, and Gat-
lin relaxed. Frayberg’s frame of
mind was merely critical. “Sam,
we’re in a rut. What’s worse, the
show’s dull!”

Sam Gatlin shrugged, not com-
mitting himself.

‘‘Seaweed Processors of Alphard
IX — who cares about seaweed?”
“It’s factual stuff,” said Sam, de-
fensive but not wanting to go too
far out on a limb. “We bring ’em
everything — color, fact, romance,
sight, sound, smell. . . . Next week,
it’s the Ball Expedition to the Mix-
tup Mountains on Gropus.”

Frayberg leaned forward. “Sam,
we’re working the wrong slant on
this stuff. . , . We’ve got to loosen

up, sock ’em! Shift our ground!
Give ’em the old human angle —
glamor, mystery, thrills!”

Sam Gatlin curled his lips. “I got
just what you want.”

“Yeah? Show me.”

Gatlin reached into his waste
basket. “I filed this just ten minutes
ago. . . .” He smoothed out the
pages. “ ‘Sequence idea, by Wilbur
Murphy. Investigate “Horseman of
Space,” the man who rides up to
meet incoming spaceships’.”

Frayberg tilted his head to the
side. “Rides up on a horse?”
“That’s what Wilbur Murphy
says.”

“How far up?”

“Does it make any difference?”
“Nev — I guess not.”

“Well, for your information, it’s
up ten thousand, twenty thousand
miles. He waves to the pilot, takes
off his hat to the passengers, then
rides back down.”

“And where does all this take
place?”

JACK VANCE

“On — on — ” Gatlin frowned. “I
can write it, but I can’t pronounce
it.” He printed on his scratch-
screen: CIRGAMESg.

“Sirgamesk,” read Frayberg.
Gatlin shook his head. “That’s
what it looks like — but those con-
sonants are all aspirated gutturals.
It’s more like ‘Hrrghameshgrrh’.”
“Where did Murphy get this
tip?”

“I didn’t bother to ask.”

“Well,” mused Frayberg, “we
could always do a show on strange
superstitions. Is Murphy around?”
“He’s explaining his expense ac-
count to Shifkin.”

“Get him in here; let’s talk to
him.”

WILBUR MURPHY had a
blond crew-cut, a broad
freckled nose, and a serious side-
long squint. He looked from his
crumpled sequence idea to Gatlin
and Frayberg. “Didn’t like it, eh?”
“We thought the emphasis should
be a little different,” explained Gat-
lin. “Instead of ‘The Space Horse-
man,’ we’d give it the working title,
‘Odd Superstitions of Hrrghame-
shgrrh’.”

“Oh, hell!” said Frayberg. “Gall
it Sirgamesk.”

“Anyway,” said Gatlin, “that’s
the angle.”

“But it’s not superstition,” said
Murphy.

“Oh, come, Wilbur. . .”

“I got this for sheer sober-sided
fact. A man rides a horse up to
meet the incoming ships!”

“Where did you get this wild
fable?”

“My brother-in-law is purser

on the Celestial Traveller. At Rik-
er’s Planet they make connection
with the feeder line out of Girga-
mesg.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gatlin.
“How did you pronounce that?”
“Girgamesg. The steward on the
shuttle-ship gave out this story, and
my brother-in-law passed it along to
me.”

“Somebody’s pulling somebody’s
leg.”

“My brother-in-law wasn’t, and
the steward was cold sober.”
“They’ve been eating bhang.
Sirgamesk is a Javanese planet,
isn’t it?”

“Javanese, Arab, Malay.”

“Then they took a bhang supply
with them, and hashish, chat, and
a few other sociable herbs.”

“Well, this horseman isn’t any
drug-dream.”

“No? What is it?”

“So far as I know it’s a man on
a horse.”

“Ten thousand miles up? In a
vacuum?”

“Exactly.”

“No space-suit?”

“That’s the story.”

Gatlin and Frayberg looked at
each other.

“Well, Wilbur,” Gatlin began.
Frayberg interrupted. “What we
can use, Wilbur, is a sequence on
Sirgamesk superstition. Emphasis
on voodoo or witchcraft — naked
girls dancing — stuff with roots in
Earth, but now typically Sirgamesk.
Lots of color. Secret rite stuff. . .”
“Not much room on Girgamesc
for secret rites.”

“It’s a big planet, isn’t it?”

“Not quite as big as Mars.
There’s no atmosphere. The settlers

SJAMBAK

live in mountain valleys, with air-
tight lids over ’em.”

Gatlin flipped the pages of
Thumbnail Sketches of the Inhabit-
ed Worlds. “Says here there’s
ancient ruins millions of years old.
When the atmosphere went, the
population went with it.”

Frayberg became animated.
“There’s lots of material out there!
Go get it, Wilbur! Life! Sex! Ex-
citement! Mystery!”

“Okay,” said Wilbur Murphy.
“But lay off this horseman-in-
space. There b a limit to public
credulity, and don’t you let any-
one tell you different.”

CIRGAMESC hung outside the
port, twenty thousand miles
ahead. The steward leaned over
Wilbur Murphy’s shoulder and
pointed a long brown finger. “It
was right out there, sir. He came
riding up — ”

“What kind of a man was it?
Strange looking?”

“No. He was Cirgameski.”

“Oh. You saw him with your
own eyes, eh?”

The steward bowed, and his loose
white mantle fell forward. “Exact-
ly, sir.”

“No helmet, no space-suit?”
“He wore a short Singhalut vest
and pantaloons and a yellow Had-
rasi hat. No more.”

“And the horse?”

“Ah, the horse! There’s a dif-
ferent matter.”

“Different how?”

“I can’t describe the horse. I was
intent on the man.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“By the brow of Lord Allah, it’s

well not to look too closely when
such matters occur.”

“Then- — you did recognize him!”

“I must .be at my task, sir.”

Murphy frowned in vexation at
the steward’s retreating back, then
bent over his camera to check the
tape-feed. If anything appeared
now, and his eyes could see it, the
two-hundred million audience of
Know Your Universe! could see it
with him.

When he looked up, Murphy
made a frantic grab for the stan-
chion, then relaxed. Cirgamesg had
taken the Great Twitch. It was an
illusion, a psychological quirk. One
instant the planet lay ahead; then
a man winked or turned away, and
when he looked back, “ahead” had
become “below”; the planet had
swung an astonishing ninety degrees
across the sky, and they were fall-
ing!

Murphy leaned against the stan-
chion. “ ‘The Great Twitch’ ,” he
muttered to himself, “I’d like to
get that on two hundred million
screens!”

Several hours passed. CirgamesQ
grew. The Sampan Range rose up
like a dark scab; the valley sultan-
ates of Singhalut, Hadra, New
Batavia, and Boeng-Bohot showed
like glistening chicken- tracks ; the
Great Rift Colony of Sundeman
stretched down through the foot-
hills like the trail of a slug.

A loudspeaker voice rattled the
ship. “Attention passengers for
Singhalut and other points on Cir-
gamesg! Kindly prepare your lug-
gage for disembarkation. Customs
at Singhalut are extremely thor-
ough. Passengers are warned to take

JACK VANCE

no weapons, drugs or explosives
ashore. This is important!”

The warning turned out to

be an understatement. Murphy
was plied with questions. He suf-
fered search of an intimate nature.
He was three-dimensionally X-
rayed with a range of frequencies
calculated to excite fluorescence in
whatever object he might have
secreted in his stomach, in a hollow
bone, or under a layer of flesh.

His luggage was explored with
similar minute attention, and
Murphy rescued his cameras with
difficulty. “What’re you so damn
anxious about? I don’t have drugs;
I don’t have contraband. . .”

“It’s guns, your excellency. Guns,
weapons, explosives. . .”

“I don’t have any guns.”

“But these objects here?”
“They’re cameras. They record
pictures and sounds and smells.”
The inspector seized the cases
with a glittering smile of triumph.
“They resemble no cameras of my
experience; I fear I shall have to
impound. . .”

A young man in loose white
pantaloons, a pink vest, pale green
cravat and a complex black turban
strolled up. The inspector made a
swift obeisance, with arms spread
wide. “Excellency,”

The young man raised two fin-
gers. “You may find it possible to
spare Mr. Murphy any unnecessary
formality.”

“As your Excellency recom-
mends. . .” The inspector nimbly
repacked Murphy’s belongings,
while the young man looked on be-
nignly.

Murphy covertly inspected his
face. The skin was smooth, the color
of the rising moon; the eyes were
narrow, dark, superficially placid.
The effect was of silken punctilio
with hot ruby blood close beneath.

Satisfied with the inspector’s
zeal, he turned to Murphy. “Allow
me to introduce myself, Tuan
Murphy. I am Ali-Tomas, of the
House of Singhalut, and my father
the Sultan begs you to accept our
poor hospitality.”

“Why, thank you,” said Murphy.
“This is a very pleasant surprise.”
“If you will allow me to conduct
you. . .” He turned to the inspector.
“Mr. Murphy’s luggage to the
palace.”

Murphy accompanied Ali-
Tomas into the outside light,
fitting his own quick step to the
prince’s feline saunter. This is com-
ing it pretty soft, he said to himself.
I’ll have a magnificent suite, with
bowls of fruit and gin pahits, not
to mention two or three silken girls
with skin like rich cream bringing
me towels in the shower. . . Well,
well, well, it’s not so bad working
for Know Your Universe! aiter all!
I suppose I ought to unlimber my
camera. . . .

Prince Ali-Tomas watched him
with interest. “And what is the
audience of Know Your Uni-
verse IT’

“We call ’em ‘participants’.”
“Expressive. And how many
participants do you serve?”

“Oh, the Bowdler Index rises and
falls. We’ve got about two hundred
million screens, with five hundred
million participants.”

SJAMBAK

“Fascinating! And tell me — how
do you record smells?”

Murphy displayed the odor re-
corder on the side of the camera,
with its gelatinous track which fixed
the molecular design.

“And the odors recreated — they
are like the originals?”

“Pretty close. Never exact, but
none of the participants knows the
difference. Sometimes the synthetic
odor is an improvement.”

“Astounding!” murmured the
prince.

“And sometimes. . . Well, Carson
Tenlake went out to get the myrrh-
blossoms on Venus. It was a hot
day — as days usually are on Venus
— and a long climb. When the show
was run off, there was more smell
of Carson than of flowers.”

Prince Ali-Tomas laughed polite-
ly. “We turn through here.”

They came out into a compound
paved with red, green and white
tiles. Beneath the valley roof was a
sinuous trough, full of haze and
warmth and golden light. As far in
either direction as the eye could
reach, the hillsides were terraced,
barred in various shades of green.
Spattering the valley floor were tall
canvas pavilions, tents, booths, shel-
ters.

“Naturally,” said Prince Ali-
Tomas, “we hope that you and your
participants will enjoy Singhalut.
It is a truism that, in order to im-
port, we must export; we wish to
encourage a pleasurable response
to the ‘Made in Singhalut’ tag on
our batiks, carvings, lacquers.”
They rolled quietly across the
square in a surface-car displaying
the House emblem. Murphy rested
against deep, cool cushions. “Your

inspectors are pretty careful about
weapons.”

Ali-Tomas smiled complacently.
“Our existence is ordered and
peaceful. You may be familiar with
the concept of adak?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A word, an idea from old Earth.
Every living act is ordered by ritu-
al. But our heritage is passionate —
and when unyielding adak stands
in the way of an irresistible emo-
tion, there is turbulence, sometimes
even killing.”

“An amok.”

“Exactly. It is as well that the
amok has no weapons other than
his knife. Otherwise he would kill
twenty where now he kills one.”
The car rolled along a narrow
avenue, scattering pedestrians to
either side like the bow of a boat
spreading foam. The men wore
loose white pantaloons and a short
open vest; the women wore only
the pantaloons.

“Handsome set of people,” re-
marked Murphy.

Ali-Tomas again smiled compla-
cently. “I’m sure Singhalut will
present an inspiring and beautiful
spectacle for your program.”
Murphy remembered the keynote
to Howard Frayberg’s instructions:
“Excitement! Sex! Mystery!” Fray-
berg cared little for inspiration or
beauty. “I imagine,” he said casual-
ly, “that you celebrate a number of
interesting festivals? Colorful danc-
ing? Unique customs?”

Ali-Tomas shook his head. “To
the contrary. We left our super-
stitions and ancestor-worship back
on Earth. We are quiet Moham-
medans and indulge in very little
festivity. Perhaps here is the reason

JACK VANCE

for amoks and sjambaks.’^

“Sjambaks?”

“We are not proud of them. You
will hear sly rumor, and it is better
that I arm you beforehand with
truth.”

“What is a sjambak?”

“They are bandits, flouters of
authority. I will show you one pres-
cntly.”

“I heard,” said Murphy, "of a
man riding a horse up to meet the
spaceships. What would account
for a story like that?”

“It can have no possible basis,”
said Prince Ali-Tomas. “We have
no horses on Cirgames^. None
whatever.”

“But. . .”

“The veriest idle talk. Such non-
sense will have no interest for your
intelligent participants.”

The car rolled into a square a
hundreds yards on a side, lined
with luxuriant banana palms. Op-
posite was an enormous pavilion of
gold and violet silk, with a dozen
peaked gables casting various
changing sheens. In the center of
the square a twenty-foot pole sup-
ported a cage about two feet wide,
three feet long, and four feet high.

Inside this cage crouched a naked
man.

The car rolled past. Prince Ali-
Tomas waved an idle hand. The
caged man glared down from
bloodshot eyes. “That,” said Ali-
Tomas, “is a sjambak. As you see,”
a faint note of apology entered his
voice, “we attempt to discourage
them.”

“What’s that metal object on his
chest?”

“The mark of his trade. By that
you may know all sjambak. In

these unsettled times only we of the
House may cover our chests — all
others must show themselves and
declare themselves true Singhalusi.”
Murphy said tentatively, “I must
come back here and photograph
that cage.”

Ali-Tomas smilingly shook his
head. “I will show you our farms,
our vines and orchards. Your par-
ticipants will enjoy these; they have
no interest in the dolor of an ig-
noble sjambak.”

“Well,” said Murphy, “our aim
is a well-rounded production. We
want to show the farmers at work,
the members of the great House at
their responsibilities, as well as the
deserved fate of wrongdoers.”
“Exactly. For every sjambak
there are ten thousand industrious
Singhalusi. It follows then that only
one ten-thousandth part of your
film should be devoted to this in-
famous minority.”

“About three-tenths of a second,
eh?”

“No more than they deserve.”
“You don’t know my Production
Director. His name is Howard
Frayberg, and. .

Howard frayberg was

deep in conference with Sam
Gatlin, under the influence of what
Gatlin called his philosophic kick.
It was the phase which Gatlin
feared most.

“Sam,” said Frayberg, “do you
know the danger of this business?”
“Ulcers,” Gatlin replied prompt-

Jy-

Frayberg shook his head. “We’ve
got an occupational disease to fight
— progressive mental myopia.”

SJAMBAK

“Speak for yourself,” said Gatlin.
“Consider. We sit in this office.
We think we know what kind of
show we want. We send out our
staff to get it. We’re signing the
checks, so back it comes the way
we asked for it. We look at it, hear
it, smell it — and pretty soon we be-
lieve it ; our version of the universe,
full-blown from our brains like
Minerva stepping out of Zeus. You
see what I mean?”

“I understand the words.”
“We’ve got our own picture of
what’s going on. We ask for it, we
get it. It builds up and up — and
finally we’re like mice in a trap
built of our own ideas. We canni-
balize our own brains.”

“Nobody’ll ever accuse you of be-
ing stingy with a metaphor.”
“Sam, let’s have the truth. How
many times have you been off
Earth?”

“I went to Mars once. And I
spent a couple of weeks at Aristil-
lus Resort on the Moon.”

Frayberg leaned back in his chair
as if shocked. “And we’re supposed
to be a couple of learned planet-
ologists !”

Gatlin made grumbling noise in
his throat. “I haven’t been around
the zodiac, so what? You sneezed
a few minutes ago and I said
gesundheit, but I don’t have any
doctor’s degree.”

“There comes a time in a man’s
life,” said Frayberg, “when he wants
to take stock, get a new perspec-
tive.”

“Relax, Howard, relax.”

“In our case it means taking out
our preconceived ideas, looking at
them, checking our illusions against
reality.”

“Are you serious about this?”
“Another thing,” said Frayberg,
“I want to check up a little, ffiaif-
kin says the expense accounts are
frightful. But he can’t fight it.
When Keeler says he paid ten
munits for a loaf of bread on Nek-
kar IV, who’s gonna call him on
it?”

“Hell, let him eat bread! That’s
cheaper than making a safari
around the cluster, spot-checking
the super-markets.”

Frayberg paid no heed. He
touched a button; a three foot
.sphere full of glistening motes ap-
peared. Earth was at the center,
with thin red lines, the scheduled
space-ship routes, radiating out in
all directions.

“Let’s see what kind of circle
we can make,” said Frayberg.
“Gower’s here at Canopus, Keeler’s
over here at Blue Moon, Wilbur
Murphy’s at Sirgamesk. . .”

“Don’t forget,” muttered Gat-
lin, “we got a show to put on.”
“We’ve got material for a year,”
scoffed Frayberg. “Get hold of
Space-Lines. We’ll start with Sir-
gamesk, and see what Wilbur
Murphy’s up to.”

WILBUR MURPHY was be-
ing presented to the Sultan of
Singhalut by the Prince Ali-Tomas.
The Sultan, a small mild man of
seventy, sat crosslegged on an enor-
mous pink and green air-cushion.
“Be at your ease, Mr. Murphy. We
dispense with as much protocol here
as practicable.” The Sultan had a
dry clipped voice and the air of a
rather harassed corporation execu-
tive. “I understand you represent

JACK VANCE

Earth-Central Home Screen Net-
work?”

“I’m a staff photographer for the
Know Your Universe! show.”

“We export a great deal to
Earth,” mused the Sultan, “but not
as much as we’d like. We’re very
pleased with your interest in us,
and naturally we want to help you
in every way possible. Tomorrow
the Keeper of the Archives will
present a series of charts analyzing
our economy. Ali-Tom^s shall per-
sonally conduct you through the
fish-hatcheries. We want you to
know we’re doing a great job out
here on Singhalut.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Murphy
uncomfortably. “However, that
isn’t quite the stuff I want.”

“No? Just where do your desires
lie?”_

Ali-Tomas said delicately. “Mr.
Murphy took a rather profound in-
terest in the sjambak displayed in
the square.”

“Oh. And you explained that
these renegades could hold no in-
terest for serious students of our
planet?”

Murphy started to explain that
clustered around two hundred mil-
lion screens tuned to Know Your
Universe! were four or five hun-
dred million participants, the
greater part of them neither serious
nor students. The Sultan cut in
decisively. “I will now impart some-
thing truly interesting. We Sing-
halusi are making preparations to
reclaim four more valleys, with an
added area of six hundred thou-
sand acres! I shall put my physio-
graphic models at your disposal;
you may use them to the fullest ex-
tent!”

“I’ll be pleased for the oppor-
tunity,” declared Murphy. “But to-
morrow I’d like to prowl around
the valley, meet your people, ob-
serve their customs, religious rites,
courtships, funerals. . .”

The Sultan pulled a sour face.
“We are ditch-water dull. Festivals
are celebrated quietly in the home;
there is small religious fervor;
courtships are consummated by
family contract. I fear you will find
little sensational material here in
Singhalut.”

“You have no temple dances?”
asked Murphy. “No fire-walkers,
snake-charmers — voodoo?”

The Sultan smiled patronizingly.
“We came out here to Cirgamesg to
escape the ancient superstitions.
Our lives are calm, orderly. Even
the amoks have practically disap-
peared.

“But the sjambaks — ”

“Negligible.”

“Well,” said Murphy, “I’d like
to visit some of these ancient
cities.”

“I advise against it,” declared
the Sultan. “They are shards,
weathered stone. There are no in-
scriptions, no art. There is no stim-
ulation in dead stone. Now. To-
morrow I will hear a report on hy-
brid soybean plantings in the Up-
per Kam District. You will want to
be present.”

MURPHY’S SUITE matched
or even excelled his expecta-
tion. He had four rooms and a pri-
vate garden enclosed by a thicket
of bamboo. His bathroom walls
were slabs of glossy actinolite, in-
laid with cinnabar, jade, galena.

SJAMBAK

pyrite and blue malachite, in rep-
resentations of fantastic birds. His
bedroom was a tent thirty feet high.
Two walls were dark green fabric;
a third was golden rust; the fourth
opened upon the private garden.

Murphy’s bed was a pink and
yellow creation ten feet square, soft
as cobweb, smelling of rose sandal-
wood. Carved black lacquer tubs
held fruit; two dozen wines, liq-
uors, syrups, essences flowed at a
touch from as many ebony spigots.

The garden centered on a pool of
cool water, very pleasant in the
hothouse climate of Singhalut. The
only shortcoming was the lack of
the lovely young servitors Murphy
had envisioned. He took it upon
himself to repair this lack, and in a
shady wine-house behind the pal-
ace, called the Barangipan, he
made the acquaintance of a girl-
musician named Soek Panjoebang.
He found her enticing tones of
quavering sweetness from the
gamelan, an instrument well-loved
in Old Bali. Soek Panjoebang had
the delicate features and transpar-
ent skin of Sumatra, the supple
long limbs of Arabia and in a pair
of wide and golden eyes a heritage
from somewhere in Celtic Europe.
Murphy bought her a goblet of
frozen shavings, each a different
perfume, while he himself drank
white rice-beer. Soek Panjoebang
displayed an intense interest in the
ways of Earth, and Murphy found
it hard to guide the conversation.
“Weelbrrr,” she said. “Such a fun-
ny name, Weelbrrr. Do you think
I could play the gamelan in the
great cities, the great palaces of
Earth?”

“Sure. There’s no law against
gamelans.”

“You talk so funny, Weelbrrr. I
like to hear you talk.”

“I suppose you get kinda bored
here in Singhalut?”

She shrugged. “Life is plea.sant,
but it concerns with little things.
We have no great adventures. We
grow flowers, we play the game-
lan.” She eyed him archly sidelong.
“We love. . . . We sleep. . . .”
Murphy grinned. “You run
amok.”

“No, no, no. That is no more.”
“Not since the sjambaks, eh?”
“The sjambaks are bad. But bet-
ter than amok. When a man feels
the knot forming around his chest,
he no longer takes his kris and runs
down the street — he becomes sjam-
bak.”

This was getting interesting.
“Where does he go? What does he
do?”

“He robs.”

“Who does he rob? What does
he do with his loot?”

She leaned toward him. “It is
not well to talk of them.”

“Why not?”

“The Sultan does not wish it..
Everywhere are listeners. When
one talks sjambak, the Sultan’s
ears rise, like the points on a cat.”
“Suppose they do — what’s the
difference? I’ve got a legitimate in-
terest. I saw one of them in that
cage out there. That’s torture. I
want to know about it.”

“He is very bad. He opened the
monorail car and the air rushed
out. Forty-two Singhalusi and
Hadrasi bloated and blew up.”
“And what happened to the
sjambak?”

JACK VANCE

“He took all the gold and money
and jewels and ran away.”

“Ran where?”

“Out across Great Pharasang
Plain. But he was a fool. He came
back to Singhalut for his wife; he
was caught and set up for all peo-
ple to look at, so they might tell
each other, ‘thus it is for sjam-
baks.’ ”

“Where do the sjambaks hide
out?”

“Oh,” she looked vaguely around
the room, “out on the plains. In
the mountains.”

“They must have some shelter —
an air-dome.”

“No. The Sultan would send out
his patrol-boat and destroy them.
They roam quietly. They hide
among the rocks and tend their
oxygen stills. Sometimes they visit
the old cities.”

“I wonder,” said Murphy, star-
ing into his beer, “could it be sjam-
baks who ride horses up to meet the
spaceship?”

Soek Panjoebang knit her black
eyebrows, as if preoccupied.

“That’s what brought me out
here,” Murphy went on. “This
story of a man riding a horse out
in space.”

“Ridiculous; we have no horses
in Cirgamesg.”

“All right, the steward won’t
swear to the horse. Suppose the
man was up there on foot or rid-
ing a bicycle. But the steward recog-
nized the man.”

“Who was this man, pray?”

“The steward clammed up. . .
The name would have been just
noise to me, anyway.”

“I might recognize the name. .

“Ask him yourself. The ship’s

still out at the field.”

She shook her head slowly, hold-
ing her golden eyes on his face. “I
do not care to attract the attention
of either steward, sjambak — or Sul-
tan.”

Murphy said impatiently. “In
any event, it’s not who — but how.
How does the man breathe? Vac-
uum sucks a man’s lungs up out of
his mouth, bursts his stomach, his
ears. . .”

“We have excellent doctors,”
said Soek Panjoebang shuddering,
“but alas! I am not one of them.”

Murphy looked at her

sharply. Her voice held the
plangent sweetness of her instru-
ment, with additional overtones of
mockery. “There must be some kind
of invisible dome around him, hold-
ing in air,” said Murphy.

“And what if there is?”

“It’s something new, and if it is,
I want to find out about it.”

Soek smiled languidly. “You are
so typical an old-lander — worried,
frowning, dynamic. You should re-
lax, cultivate napau, enjoy life as
we do here in Singhalut.”

“What’s napau?”

“It’s our philosophy, where we
find meaning and life and beauty
in every aspect of the world.”
“That sjambak in the cage
could do with a little less napau
right now.”

“No doubt he is unhappy,” she
agreed.

“Unhappy! He’s being tor-
tured!”

“He broke the Sultan’s law. His
life is no longer his own. It belongs
to Singhalut. If the Sultan wishes

SJAMBAK

to use it to warn other wrong-
doers, the fact that the man suffers
is of small interest.”

“If they all wear that metal or-
nament, how can they hope to hide
out?” He glanced at her own bare
bosom.

“They appear by night — slip
through the streets like ghosts. .
She looked in turn at Murphy’s
loose shirt. “You will notice per-
sons brushing up against you, feel-
ing you,” she laid her hand along
his breast, “and when this happens
you will know they are agents of the
Sultan, because only strangers and
the House may wear shirts. But
now, let me sing to you — a song
from the Old Land, old Java. You
will not understand the tongue, but
no other words so join the voice of
the gamelan,”

//THIS IS the gravy-train,” said
■ Murphy. “Instead of a .gar-
den suite with a private pool, I
usually sleep in a bubble-tent, with
nothing to eat but condensed food.”
Soek Panjoebang flung the water
out of her sleek black hair. “Per-
haps, Weelbrrr, you will regret leav-
ing Cirgames^?”

“Well,” he looked up to the trans-
parent roof, barely visible where the
sunlight collected and refracted, “I
don’t particularly like being shut up
like a bird in an aviary. . . . Mildly
claustrophobic, I guess.”

After breakfast, drinking thick
coffee from tiny silver cups, Murphy
looked long and reflectively at Soek
Panjoebang.

“What are you thinking, Weel-
brrr?”

Murphy drained his coffee. “I’m

thinking that I’d better be getting
to work.”

“And what do you do?”

“First I’m going to shoot the pal-
ace, and you sitting here in the gar-
den playing your gamelan.”

“But Weelbrrr — not me!”
“You’re a part of the universe,
rather an interesting part. Then I’ll
take the square. . . .”

“And the sjambak?”

A quiet voice spoke from behind.
“A visitor, Tuan Murphy.”

Murphy turned his head. “Bring
him in.” He looked back to Soek
Panjoebang. She was on her feet.
“It is necessary that I go.”
“When will I see you?”

“Tonight — at the Barangipan.”

HE QUIET VOICE said, “Mr.
Rube Trimmer, Tuan.”
Trimmer was small and middle-
aged, with thin shoulders and a
paunch. He carried himself with a
hell-raising swagger, left over from
a time twenty years gone. His skin
had the waxy look of lost floridity,
his tuft of white hair was coarse
and thin, his eyelids hung in the
off-side droop that amateur physi-
ognomists like to associate with
guile.

“I’m Resident Director of the
Import-Export Bank,” said Trim-
mer. “Heard you were here and
thought I’d pay my respects.”

“I suppose you don’t see many
strangers.”

“Not too many— there’s nothing
much to bring ’em. CirgamesQ isn’t
a comfortable tourist planet. Too
confined, shut in. A man with a
sensitive psyche goes nuts pretty
easy here.”

JACK VANCE

“Yeah/’ said Murphy. “I was
thinking the same thing this naorn-
ing. That dome begins to give a
man the willies. How do the natives

stand it? Or do they?”

Trimmer pulled out a cigar case,
Murphy refused the offer.

“Local tobacco,” ^aid Trimmer.
“Very good.” He lit up thoughtful-
ly. “Well, you might say that the
Cirgamcski are schizophrenic.
They’ve got the docile Javanese
blood, plus the Arabian elan. The
Javanese part is on top, but every
once in a while you see a flash of
arrogance. . . . You never know.
I’ve been out here nine years and
Fm still a stranger.” He puffed on
his cigar, studied Murphy with his
careful eves. “You work for Know
Your Universe! y I hear,”

“Yeah. I’m one of the leg men,”
“Must be a great job.”

“A man sees a lot of the galaxy,
and he runs into queer talcs, like
this sjambak stuff.”

Trimmer nodded without sur-
prise. “My advice to you, Murphy,
is lay off the sjambaks. They’re not
healthy around here.”

Murphy was startled by the
bluntness. “What’s the big mystery
about these sjambaks?”

Trimmer looked around the
room. “This place is bugged.”

“I found two pick-ups and
plugged ’em,” said Murphy.

Trimmer laughed. “Those were
just plants. They hide ’em ^vhere a
man might just barely spot ’em.
You can’t catch the real ones.

They’re woven into the cloth —
pres sure- sensi tive wires .’ ’

Murphy looked critically at the
cloth walls.

“Don’t let it worry you,” said

Trimmer. “They listen more out of
habit than anything else. If you’re
fussy we’ll go for a walk.”

The road led past the palace into
the country. Murphy and Trimmer
sauntered along a placid river, over-
grown with lily pads, swarming
with large wLite ducks.

“This sjambak business,” said
Murphy. “Everybody talks around
it. You can’t pin anybody down.”
“Including me,” said Trimmer.
“I’m more or less privileged around
here. The Sultan finances his recla-
mation through the bank, on the
basis of my reports. But there’s
more to Sinahalut than the Sultan.”
“Namely?”

Trimmer w'aved his cigar w^ag-
gishly. “Now w-e’re getting in where
I don’t like to talk. I’ll give you a
hint. Prince Ali thinks roofing-in
more valleys is a waste of money,
when there’s Hadras and New Ba-
tavia and Sundaman so close,”
“You mean — armed conquest?”
Trimmer laughed. “You said it,
not me.”

“They can’t carry on much of a
war — unless the soldiers commute
bv monorail.”

“Maybe Prince Ali thinks he’s
got the answer.”

“Sjambaks?”

“I didn’t say it,” said Trimmer
blandly.

Murphy grinned. After a mo-
ment he said, “I picked up with a
girl named Soek Panjoebang who
plays the gamelan. I suppose she’s
working for cither the Sultan or

V J

Pl'ince Ali. Do you know wliich?”
Tiimmer’s eyes sparkled. He
shook his head. “Might be either
one. There’s a w'ay to find out.”
“Yeah?”

SJAMBAK

‘'Get her off where you’re sure
there’s no spy-cells. Tell her two
things — one for Ali, the other for
the Sultan. Whichever one reacts
you know you’ve got her tagged.”
"For instance?”

"Well, for instance she learns that
you can rig up a hypnotic ray from
a flash-light battery, a piece of
bamboo, and a few- lengths of wire.
That’ll get Ali in an awful sweat.
He can’t get weapons. None at all.
And for the Sultan,” Trimmer was
warming up to his intrigue, chew-
ing on his cigar with gusto, "tell her
you’re on to a catalyst that turns
clay into aluminum and oxygen in
the presence of sunlight. The Sul-
tan would sell liis right leg for
something like that. He tries hard
for Singhalut and Cirgamesc.”
"And Ali?”

Trimmer hesitated. "I never said
what I’m gonna say. Don’t forget —
I never said it.”

"Okay, you never said it.”

"Ever hear of a jehad
"Mohammedan holy wars.”
"Believe it or not, Ali wants a

jehad”

"Sounds kinda fantastic.”

"Sure it’s fantastic. Don’t forget,
I never said anything about it. But

suppose someone — strictly unoffi-
cial, of course — let the idea perco-
late around the Peace Office back
home,”

"Ah,” said Murphy. "That’s why
you came to see me.”

"TRIMMER TURNED a look of

® injured innocence, "No^y, Mur-
phy, you’re a little unfair. I’m a
friendly guy. Of course I don’t like
to see the bank lose what we’ve got

tied up in the Sultan.”

"Why don’t you send in a report
yourself?”

"I have! But when they hear the
same thing from you, a Kiioiv Your
Universe! man, they might make a
move.”

Murphy nodded.

"Well, we understand each
other,” said Trimmer heartily,
“and everything’s clear.”

“Not entirely. How’s AH going to
launch a jehad when he doesn’t
have any weapons, no warships, no
supplies?”

"Now,” said Trimmer, "we’re
getting into the realm of supposi-
tion.” He paused, looked behind
him. A farmer pushing a rotary
tiller, bowed politely, trundled
ahe^d. Behind was a voung man in
a black turban, gold earrings, a
black and red vest, white panta-
loon.s, black curl-toed slippers. He
bowed, started past. Trimmer held
up his hand. "Don’t waste your
time up there : we’re going back in
a few minutes.”

"Thank you, Tuan.”

"Who are you reporting to? The
Sultan or Prince Ali?”

"The Tuan is sure to pierce the
veil of my evasions. I shall not dis-

•p

semble. I am the Sultan’s mam”
Trimmer nodded. "Now. if you’ll
kindly remove to about a hundred
yards, where your whisper pick-up
won’t work.”

“By your leave, I go.” He re-
treated without haste.

"He’s almost certainly working
for Ali,” said Trimmer,

"Not a very subtle lie.”

"Oh yes — third level. He figured
I’d take it second level,”

“How’s that again?”

JACK VANCE

“Naturally I wouldn’t believe
him. He knew I knew that he knew
it. So when he said ‘Sultan’, I’d
think he wouldn’t lie simply, but
that he’d lie double — that he ac-
tually was working for the Sultan.”
Murphy laughed. “Suppose he
told you a fourth level lie?”

“It starts to be a toss-up pretty
soon,” Trimmer admitted. “I don’t
think he gives me credit for that
much subtlety. . . What are you
doing the rest of the day?”

“Taking footage. Do you know
where I can find some picturesque
rites? Mystical dances, human sacri-
fice? I’ve got to work up some
glamor and exotic lore.”

“There’s this sjambak in the
cage. That’s about as close to the
medieval as you’ll find anywhere in
Earth Commonwealth.”

“Speaking of sjambaks. . .”

“No time,” said Trimmer. “Got
to get back. Drop in at my office —
right down the square from the
palace.”

URPHY RETURNED to his
suite. The shadowy figure of
his room servant said, “His High-
ness the Sultan desires the Tuan’s
attendance in the Cascade Gar-
den.”

“Thank you,” said Murphy. “As
soon as I load my camera.”

The Cascade Room was an ppen
patio in front of an artificial water-
fall. The Sultan was pacing back
and forth, wearing dusty khaki put-
tees, brown plastic boots, a yellow
polo shirt. He carried a twig which
he used as a riding crop, slapping
his boots as he walked. He turned
his head as Murphy appeared,

pointed his twig at a wicker bench.

“I pray you sit down, Mr. Mur-
phy.” He paced once up and back.
“How is your suite? You find it to
your liking?”

“Very much so.”

“Excellent,” said the Sultan.
“You do me honor with your pres-
ence.”

Murphy waited patiently.

“I understand that you had a
visitor this morning,” said the Sul-
tan.

“Yes. Mr. Trimmer.”

“May I inquire the nature of the
conversation?”

“It was of a personal nature,”
said Murphy, rather more shortly
than he meant.

The Sultan nodded wistfully. “A
Singhalusi would have wasted an
hour telling me half-truths — dis-
torted enough to confuse, but not
sufficiently inaccurate to anger me
if I had a spy-cell on him all the
time.”

Murphy grinned. “A Singhalusi
has to live here the rest of his life.”

A servant wheeled a frosted cab-
inet before them, placed goblets
under two spigots, withdrew. The
Sultan cleared his throat. “Trim-
mer is an excellent fellow, but un-
believably loquacious.”

Murphy drew himself two inches
of chilled rosy-pale liquor. The Sul-
tan slapped his boots with the twig.
“Undoubtedly he confided all my
private business to you, or at least
as much as I have allowed him to
learn.”

“Well — he spoke of your hope to
increase the compass of Singhalut.”

“That, my friend, is no hope; it’s
absolute necessity. Our population
density is fifteen hundred to the

SJAMBAK

square mile. We must expand or
smother. There’ll be too little food
to eat, too little oxygen to breathe.”
Murphy suddenly came to life. “I
could make that idea the theme of
my feature! Singhalut Dilemma:
Expand or Perish!”

“No, that would be inadvisable,
inapplicable.”

Murphy was not convinced. “It
sounds like a natural.”

The Sultan smiled. “I’ll impart
an item of confidential informa-
tion— although Trimmer no doubt
has preceded me with it.” He gave
his boots an irritated whack. “To
expand I need funds. Funds are
best secured in an atmosphere of
calm and confidence. The implica-
tion of emergency would be disas-
trous to my aims.”

“Well,” said Murphy, “I see
your position.”

The Sultan glanced at Murphy
sidelong. “Anticipating your coop-
eration, my Minister of Propaganda
has arranged an hour’s program,
stressing our progressive social atti-
tude, our prosperity and financial
prospects. ...”

“But, Sultan. . .

“Well?”

“I can’t allow your Minister of
Propaganda to use me and Know
Your Universe! as a kind of invest-
ment brochure.”

The Sultan nodded wearily. “I
expected you to take that atti-
tude. . . Well — what do you your-
self haye in mind?”

‘Tve been looking for something
to tie to,” .said Murphy. “I think
it’s going to be the dramatic con-
trast between the ruined cities and
the new domed valleys. How the
Earth settlers succeeded where the

ancient people failed to meet the
challenge of the dissipating atmos-
phere.”

“Well,” the Sultan said grudg-
ingly, “that’s not too bad.”

“Today I want to take some
shots of the palace, the dome, the
city, the paddies, groves, orchards,
farms. Tomorrow I’m taking a trip
out to one of the ruins.”

“I see,” said the Sultan. “Then
you won’t need my charts and sta-
tistics?”

“Well, Sultan, I could film the
stuff your Propaganda Minister
cooked up, and I could take it back
to Earth. Howard Frayberg or Sam
Gatlin would tear into it, rip it
apart, lard in some head-hunting, a
little cannibalism and temple pros-
titution, and you’d never know you
where watching Singhalut. You’d
scream with horror, and I’d be
fired.”

“In that case,” said the Sultan,
“I will leave you to the dictates of
your conscience.”

Howard frayberg looked

around the gray landscape of
Riker’s Planet, gazed out over the
roaring black Mogador Ocean.
“Sam, I think there’s a story out
there.”

Sam Gatlin shivered inside his
electrically heated glass overcoat.
“Out on that ocean? It’s full of
man-eating plesiosaurs — horrible
things forty feet long.”

“Suppose we worked something
out on the line of Moby Dick? The
White Monster of the Mogador
Ocean. We’d set sail in a cata-
maran— ”

“Us?”

JACK VANCE

“It starts to be a toss-up pretty
soon,” Trimmer admitted. “I don’t
think he gives me credit for that
much subtlety. . . What are you
doing the rest of the day?”

“Taking footage. Do you know
where I can find some picturesque
rites? Mystical dances, human sacri-
fice? I’ve got to work up some
glamor and exotic lore.”

“There’s this sjambak in the
cage. That’s about as close to the
medieval as you’ll find anywhere in
Earth Commonwealth.”

“Speaking of sjambaks. . .”

“No time,” said Trimmer. “Got
to get back. Drop in at my office —
right down the square from the
palace.”

URPHY RETURNED to his
suite. The shadowy figure of
his room servant said, “His High-
ness the Sultan desires the Tuan’s
attendance in the Cascade Gar-
den.”

“Thank you,” said Murphy. “As
soon as I load my camera.”

pointed his twig at a wicker bench.

“I pray you sit down, Mr. Mur-
phy.” He paced once up and back.
“How is your suite? You find it to
your liking?”

“Very much so.”

“Excellent,” said the Sultan.
“You do me honor with your pres-
ence.”

Murphy waited patiently.

“I understand that you had a
visitor this morning,” said the Sul-
tan.

“Yes. Mr. Trimmer.”

“May I inquire the nature of the
conversation?”

“It was of a personal nature,”
said Murphy, rather more shortly
than he meant.

Murphy grinned. “A Singhalusi
has to live here the rest of his life.”

A servant wheeled a frosted cab-
inet before them, placed goblets
under two spigots, withdrew. The
Sultan cleared his throat. “Trim-
mer is an excellent fellow, but un-
believably loquacious.”

“Well — ^he spoke of your hope to
increase the compass of Singhalut.”

“That, my friend, is no hope; it’s
absolute necessity. Our population
density is fifteen hundred to the

SJAMBAK

“No, that would be inadvisable,
inapplicable.”

Murphy was not convinced. “It
sounds like a natural.”

“Well,” said Murphy, “I see
your position.”

“But, Sultan. . .

“Well?”

“I can’t allow your Minister of
Propaganda to use me and Know
Your Universe! as a kind of invest-
ment brochure.”

The Sultan nodded wearily. “I
expected you to take that atti-
tude. . . Well — what do you your-
self have in mind?”

“I’ve been looking for something
to tie to,” said Murphy. “I think
it’s going to be the dramatic con-
trast between the ruined cities and
the new domed valleys. How the
Earth settlers succeeded where the

ancient people failed to meet the
challenge of the dissipating atmos-
phere.”

“Well,” the Sultan said grudg-
ingly, “that’s not too bad.”

“Today I want to take some
shots of the palace, the dome, the
city, the paddies, groves, orchards,
farms. Tomorrow I’m taking a trip
out to one of the ruins.”

“I see,” said the Sultan. “Then
you won’t need my charts and sta-’
tistics?”

“In that case,” said the Sultan,
“I will leave you to the dictates of
your conscience.”

OWARD FRAYBERG looked
around the gray landscape of
Riker’s Planet, gazed out over the
roaring black Mogador Ocean.
“Sam, I think there’s a story out
there.”

Sam Gatlin shivered inside his
electrically heated glass overcoat.
“Out on that ocean? It’s full of
man-eating plesiosaurs — horrible
things forty feet long.”

“Suppose we worked somSthing
out on the line of Moby Dick? The
White Monster of the Mogador
Ocean. We’d set sail in a cata-
maran— ”

“Us?”

JACK VANCE

“No,” said Frayberg impatiently.
“Of course not us. Two or three of
the staff. They’d sail out there, look
over these gray and red monsters,
maybe fake a fight or two, but all
the time they’re after the legendary
white one. How’s it sound?”

“I don’t think we pay our men
enough money.”

“Wilbur Murphy might do it.
He’s willing to look for a man rid-
ing a horse up to meet his space-
ships.”

“He might draw the line at a
white plesiosaur riding up to meet
his catamaran.”

Frayberg turned away. “Some-
body’s got to have ideas around
here. . .”

“We’d better head back to the
space-port,” said Gatlin. “We got
two hours to make the Sirgamesk
shuttle.”

ILBUR MURPHY sat in the
Barangipan, watching mar-
ionettes performing to xylophone,
Castanet, gong and gamelan. The
drama had its roots in proto-his-
toric Mohenjo-Dar5. It had filtered
down through ancient India, medi-
eval Burma, Malaya, across the
Straits of Malacca to Sumatra and
Java; from modern Java across
space to CirgamesQ, five thousand
years of time, two hundred light-
years of space. Somewhere along
the route it had met and assimi-
lated modern technology. Magnetic
beams controlled arms, legs and
bodies, guided the poses and pos-
turings. The manipulator’s face, by
agency of clip, wire, radio control
and minuscule selsyn, projected his
scowl, smile, sneer or grimace to

the peaked little face he controlled.
The language was that of Old Java,
which perhaps a third of the spec-
tators understood. This portion did
not include Murphy, and when
the performance ended he was no
wiser than at the start.

Soek Panjoebang slipped into the
seat beside Murphy. She wore mu-
sician’s garb: a sarong of brown,
blue, and black batik, and a fan-
tastic headdress of tiny silver bells.
She greeted him with enthusiasm.

“Weelbrrr! I saw you watch-
ing. ...”

“It was very interesting.”

“Ah, yes.” She sighed. “Weelbrrr,
you take me with you back to
Earth? You make me a great pic-
turama star, please, Weelbrrr?”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“I behave very well, Weelbrrr.”
She nuzzled his shoulder, looked
soulfully up with her shiny yellow-
hazel eyes. Murphy nearly forgot
the experiment he intended to per-
form.

“What did you do today, Weel-
brrr? You look at all the pretty
girls?”

“Nope. I ran footage. Got the
palace, climbed the ridge up to the
condensation vanes. I never knew
there was so much water in the air
till I saw the stream pouring off
thosp vanes! And hot/"

“We have much sunlight; it
makes the rice grow.”

“The Sultan ought to put some
of that excess light to work.
There’s a secret process. . . . Well,
I’d better not say.”

“Oh come, Weelbrrr! Tell me
your secrets!”

“It’s not much of a secret. Just
a catalyst that separates clay into

SJAMBAK

aluminum and oxygen when sun-
light shines on it.”

Soek’s eyebrows rose, poised in
place like a seagull riding the wind.
“Weelbrrr! I did not know you for
a man of learning!”

“Oh, you thought I was just a
bum, eh? Good enough to make
picturama stars out of gamelan
players, but no special genius. .
“No, no, Weelbrrr.”

“I know lots of tricks. I can take
a flashlight battery, a piece of cop-
per foil, a few transistors and bam-
boo tube and turn out a paralyzer
gun that’ll stop a man cold in his
tracks. And you know how much it
costs?”

“No, Weelbrrr. How much?”
“Ten cents. It wears out after
two or three months, but what’s
the difference? I make ’em as a
hobby — turn out two or three an
hour.”

“Weelbrrr! You’re a man of mar-
vels! Hello! We will drink!”

And Murphy settled back in the
wicker chair, sipping his rice beer.

//TODAY,” said Murphy, “I get
I into a space-suit, and ride
out to the ruins in the plain. Ghata-
mipol, I think they’re called. Like
to come?”

“No, Weelbrrr.” Soek Panjoe-
bang looked off into the garden,
her hands busy tucking a flower
into her hair. A few minutes later
she said, “Why must you waste
your time among the rocks? There
are better things to do and see.
And it might well be — dangerous.”
She murmured the last word off-
handedly.

“Danger? From the sjambaks?”

“Yes, perhaps.”

“The Sultan’s giving me a guard.
Twenty men wiffi crossbows.”
“The sjambaks carry shields.”
“Why should they risk their lives
attacking me?”

Soek Panjoebang shrugged. Aft-
er a moment she rose to her feet.
“Goodbye, Weelbrrr.”

“Goodbye? Isn’t this rather
abrupt? Won’t I see you tonight?”
“If so be Allah’s will.”

Murphy looked after the lithe
swaying figure. She paused, plucked
a yellow flower, looked over her
shoulder. Her eyes, yellow as the
flower, lucent as water- jewels, held
his. Her face was utterly expres-
sionless. She turned, tossed away
the flower with a jaunty gesture,
and continued, her shoulders
swinging.

Murphy breathed deeply. She
might have made picturama at
that. . .

One hour later he met his escort
at the valley gate. They were
dressed in space-suits for the plains,
twenty men with sullen faces. The
trip to Ghatamipol clearly was not
to their liking. Murphy climbed into
his own suit, checked the oxygen
pressure gauge, the seal at his col-
lar. “All ready, boys?”

No one spoke. The silence drew
out. The gatekeeper, on hand to
let the party out, snickered.
“They’re all ready, Tuan.”

“Well,” said Murphy, “let’s go
then.”

Outside the gate Murphy made
a second check of his equipment.
No leaks in his suit. Inside pressure :
14.6. Outside pressure; zero. His
twenty guards morosely inspected
their crossbows and slim swords.

JACK VANCE

The white ruins of Ghatamipol
lay five miles across Pharasang
Plain. The horizon was clear, the
sun was high, the sky was black.

Murphy’s radio hummed. Some-
one said sharply, “Look! There it
goes!” He wheeled around; his
guards had halted, and were point-
ing. He saw a fleet something van-
ishing into the distance.

“Let’s go,” said Murphy.
“There’s nothing out there.”

“Sjambak.”

“’Well, there’s only one of them.”

“Where one walks, others fol-
low.”

“That’s why the twenty of you
are here.”

“It is madness! Challenging the
sjambaks!”

“What is gained?” another ar-
gued.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said
Murphy, and set off along the
plain. The warriors reluctantly fol-
lowed, muttering to each other
over their radio intercoms.

The eroded city walls rose
above them, occupied more
and more of the sky. The platoon
leader said in an angry voice, “We
have gone far enough.”

“You’re under my orders,” said
Murphy. “We’re going through
the gate.” He punched the button
on his camera and passed under
the monstrous portal.

The city was frailer stuff than
the wall, and had succumbed to the
thin storms which had raged a mil-
lion years after the passing of life.
Murphy marvelled at the scope of
the ruins. Virgin archaeological
territory! No telling what a few

weeks digging might turn up. Mur-
phy considered his expense ac-
count. Shifkin was the obstacle.

There’d be tremendous prestige
and publicity for Know Your Uni-
verse! if Murphy uncovered a
tomb, a library, works of art. The
Sultan would gladly provide dig-
gers. They were a sturdy enough
people; they could make quite a
showing in a week, if they were
able to put aside their superstitions,
fears and dreads.

Murphy sized one of them up
from the comer of his eye. He sat
on a sunny slab of rock, and if he
felt uneasy he concealed it quite
successfully. In fact, thought Mur-
phy, he appeared completely re-
laxed. Maybe the problem of se-
curing diggers was a minor one aft-
er all. . .

And here was an odd sidelight
on the Singhalusi character. Once
clear of the valley the man openly
wore his shirt, a fine loose garment
of electric blue, in defiance of the
Sultan’s edict. Of course out here
he might be cold. . .

Murphy felt his own skin crawl-
ing. How could he be cold? How
could he be alive? Where was his
space-suit? He lounged on the rock,
grinning sardonically at Murphy.
He wore heavy sandals, a black
turban, loose breeches, the blue
shirt. Nothing more.

Where were the others?

Murphy turned a feverish glance
over his shoulder. A good three
miles distant, bounding and leap-
ing toward Singhalut, were twenty
desperate figures. They all wore
space-suits. This man here. . . A
sjambak? A wizard? A hallucina-
tion?

SJAMBAK

HE CREATURE rose to his
feet, strode springily toward
Murphy. He carried a crossbow and
a sword, like those of Murphy’s
fleet-footed guards. But he wore no
space-suit. Could there be breathy
able traces of an atmosphere? Mur-
phy glanced at his gauge. Outside
pressure: zero.

Two other men appeared, mov-
ing with long elastic steps. Their
eyes were bright, their faces flushed.
They came up to Murphy, took his
arm. They were solid, corporeal.
They had no invisible force fields
around their heads.

Murphy jerked his arm free.
“Let go of me, damn it!” But they
certainly couldn’t hear him through
the vacuum.

He glanced over his shoulder.
The first man held his naked blade
a foot or two behind Murphy’s
bulging space-suit. Murphy made
no further resistance. He punched
the button on his camera to auto-
matic. It would now run for sev-
eral hours, recording one hundred
pictures per second, a thousand to
the inch.

The sjambaks led Murphy two
hundred yards to a metal door.
They opened it, pushed Murphy
inside, banged it shut. Murphy felt
the vibration through his shoes,
heard a gradually waxing hum. His
gauge showed an outside pressure
of 5, 10, 12, 14, 14.5. An inner
door opened. Hands pulled Murphy
in, undamped his dome.

“Just what’s going on here?”
demanded Murphy angrily.

Prince Ali-Tomas pointed to a
table. Murphy saw a flashlight bat-
tery, aluminum foil, wire, a tran-
sistor kit, metal tubing, tools, a few

other odds and ends.

“There it is,” said Prince Ali-
Tomas. “Get to work. Let’s see one
of these paralysis weapons you
boast of.”

“Just like that, eh?”

“Just like that.”

“What do you want ’em for?”
“Does it matter?”

“I’d like to know.” Murphy was
conscious of his camera, recording
sight, sound, odor.

“I lead an army,” said Ali-To-
mas, “but they march without
weapons. Give me weapons! I will
carry the word to Hadra, to New
Batavia, to Sundaman, to Boeng-
Bohdt!”

“How? Why?”

“It is enough that I will it.
Again, I beg of you. . .” He indi-
cated the table.

Murphy laughed. “I’ve got my-
self in a fine mess. Suppose I don’t
make this weapon for you?”

“You’ll remain until you do, un-
der increasingly difficult condi-
tions.”

“I’ll be here a long time.”

“If such is the case,” said Ali-
Tomas, “we must make our ar-
rangements for your care on a long-
term basis.”

Ali made a gesture. Hands seized
Murphy’s shoulders. A respirator
was held to his nostrils. He thought
of his camera, and he could have
laughed. Mystery! Excitement!
Thrills! Dramatic sequence for
Know Your Universe! Staff-man
murdered by fanatics! The crime
recorded on his own camera! See
the blood, hear his death-rattle,
smell the poison!

The vapor choked him. What a
break! What a sequence!

//CIRGAMESK,” said Howard
•^Frayberg, “bigger and bright-
er every minute.”

“It must’ve been just about in
here,” said Gatlin, “that Wilbur’s
horseback rider appeared.”

“That’s right! Steward!”

“Yes, sir?’’

“We’re about twenty thousand
miles out, aren’t we?”

“About fifteen thousand, sir.”
“Sidereal Cavalry! What an idea!
I wonder how Wilbur’s making out
on his superstition angle?”

Sam Gatlin, watching out the
window, said in a tight voice,
“Why not ask him yourself?”
“Eh?”

“Ask him for yourself! There he
is — outside, riding some kind of
critter. . .”

“It’s a ghost,” whispered Fray-
berg. “A man without a space-
suit. . . There’s no such thing!”

“He sees us. . . Look. , .”
Murphy was staring at them,
and his surprise seemed equal to
their own. He waved his hand. Gat-
lin gingerly waved back.

Said Frayberg, “That’s not a
horse he’s riding. It’s a combina-
tion ram-jet and kiddie car with
stirrups!”

“He’s coming aboard the ship,”
said Gatlin. “That’s the entrance
port down there. . .

WILBUR MURPHY sat in the
captain’s stateroom, taking
careful breaths of air.

“How are you now?” asked
Frayberg.

“Fine. A little sore in the lungs.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” the ship’s

JACK VANCE

doctor growled. “I never saw any-
thing like it.”

“How does it feel out there, Wil-
bur?” Gatlin asked.

“It feels awful lonesome and
empty. And the breath seeping up
out of your lungs, never going in —
that’s a funny feeling. And you
miss the air blowing on your skin.
I never realized it before. Air feels
like — like silk, like whipped cream
— it’s got texture. . . .”

“But aren’t you cold? Space is
supposed to be absolute zero!”
“Space is nothing. It’s not hot
and it’s not cold. When you’re in
the sunlight you get warm. It’s bet-
ter in the shade. You don’t lose any
heat by air convection, but radia-
tion and sweat evaporation keep
you comfortably cool.”

“I still can’t understand it,” said
Frayberg. “This Prince Ali, he’s a
kind of a rebel, eh?”

“I don’t blame him in a way. A
normal man living under those
domes has to let off steam some-
how. Prince Ali decided to go out
crusading. I think he would have
made it too — at least on Girga-
mes^.”

“Certainly there are many more
men inside the domes. . .”

“When it comes to fighting,” said
Murphy, “a sjambak can lick
twenty men in spacesuits. A little
nick doesn’t hurt him, but a little
nick bursts open a spacesuit, and^
the man inside comes apart.”
“Well,” said the Captain. “I
imagine the Peace Office will send
out a team to put things in order
now.”

Gatlin asked, “What happened
when you woke up from the chloro-
form?”

SJAMBAK

“Well, nothing very miKh. I felt
this attachment on my chest, but
didn’t think much about it. Still
kinda woozy. I was halfway
through decompression. They keep
a man there eight hours, drop pres-
sure on him two pounds an hour,
nice and slow so he don’t get the
bends.”

“Was this the same place they
took you, when you met Ali?”

“Yeah, that was their decompres-
sion chamber. They had to make a
sjambak out of me; there wasn’t
anywhere else they could keep me.
Well, pretty soon my head cleared,
and I saw this apparatus stuck to
my chest.” He poked at the mech-
anism on the table. “I saw the oxy-
gen tank, I saw the blood running
dirough the plastic pipes — blue
from me to that carburetor ar-
rangement, red on the way back
in — and I figured out the whole ar-
rangement. Carbon dioxide still ex-
hales up through your lungs, but
the vein back to the left auricle is
routed through the carburetor and
supercharged with oxygen. A man
doesn’t need to breathe. The car-
buretor flushes his blood with oxy-
gen, the decompression tank ad-
justs him to the lack of air-pres-
sure. There’s only one thing to look
out for; that’s not to touch any-
thing with your naked flesh. If it’s
in the sunshine it’s blazing hot; if
it’s in the shade it’s cold enough to
cut. Otherwise you’re free as a
bird.”

“But — ^how did you get away?”

“I saw those little rocket-bikes,
and began figuring. I couldn’t go

back to Singhalut; I’d be lynched
on sight as a sjambak. I couldn’t fly
to another planet — the bikes don’t
carry enough fuel.

“I knew when the ship would be
coming in, so I figured I’d fly up to
meet it. I told the guard I was go-
ing outside a minute, and I got on
one of the rocket-bikes. There was
nothing much to it.”

“Well,” said Frayberg, “it’s a
great feature, Wilbur — a great film!
Maybe we can stretch it into two
hours.”

“There’s one thing bothering
me,” said Gatlin. “Who did the
steward see up here the first time?”
Murphy shrugged. “It might
have been somebody up here sky-
larking. A little too much oxygen
and you start cutting all kinds of
capers. Or it might have been
someone who decided he had
enough crusading.

“There’s a sjambak in a cage,
right in the middle of Singhalut.
Prince Ali walks past; they look at
each other eye to eye. Ali smiles a
little and walks on. Suppose this
sjambak tried to escape to the ship.
He’s taken aboard, turned over to
the Sultan and the Sultan makes an
example of him. . .”

“What’ll the Sultan do to Ali?”
Murphy shook his head. “If I
were Ali I’d disappear.”

A loudspeaker turned on. “Atten-
tion all passengers. We have just
passed through quarantine. Passen-
gers may now disembark. Impor-
tant: no weapons or explosives al-
lowed on Singhalut!”

“This is where I came in,” said
Murphy.

THE END

There’s no such thing as a weapon too horrible
to use; weapons will continue to become bigger,
and deadlier. Like other things that can’t be
stopped ...

IRRESISTIBLE WEAPON

By H. B. Fyfe

Illustrated by ED EMSH

IN THE SPECIAL observation
dome of the colossal command
ship just beyond Pluto, every nerv-
ous clearing of a throat rasped
through the silence. Telescopes
were available but most of the
scientists and high officials pre-
ferred the view on the huge tele-
screen.

This showed, from a distance of
several million miles, one of the
small moons of the frigid planet, so
insignificant that it had not been
discovered until man had pushed
the boundaries of space exploration
past the asteroids. The satellite was
about to become spectacularly sig-
nificant, however, as the first tar-
get of man’s newest, most destruc-
tive weapon.

“I need not remind you, gentle-
men,” white-haired Co-ordinator
Evora of Mars had said, “that if
we have actually succeeded in this
race against our former Centaurian

colonies, it may well prevent the
imminent conflict entirely. In a
few moments we shall know wheth-
er our scientists have developed a
truly irresistible weapon.”

Of all the officials, soldiers, and
scientists present, Arnold Gibson
was perhaps the least excited. For
one thing, he had labored hard to
make the new horror succeed and
felt reasonably confident that it
would. The project had been given
the attention of every first class
scientific mind in the Solar System ;
for the great fear was that the new
states on the Centaurian planets
might win the race of discovery
and . . .

And bring a little order into this
old-fashioned, inefficient fumbling
toward progress, Gibson thought
contemptuously. Look at them —
fools for all their degrees and titles!
They’ve stumbled on something
with possibilities beyond their con-

H. B. FYFE

fused powers of application.

A gasp rustled through the
chamber, followed by an even more
awed silence than had preceded
the unbelievable, ultra-rapid action
on the telescreen. Gibson permitted
himself a tight smile of satisfaction.

Now my work really begins, he
reflected.

A few quick steps brought him
to Dr. Haas, director of the project,
just before the less stunned observ-
ers surrounded that gentleman,
babbling questions.

“I’ll start collecting the Number
Three string of recorders,” he re-
ported.

“All right, Arnold,” agreed Haas.
“Tell the others to get their ships
out too. I’ll be busy here.”

Not half as busy as you will be
in about a day, thought Gibson,
heading for the spaceship berths.

E HAD ARRANGED to be as-
signed the recording machines
drifting in space at the greatest dis-
tance from the command ship. The
others would assume that he need-
ed more time to locate and retrieve
the apparatus — ^which would give
him a head start toward Alpha
Centauri.

His ship was not large, but it was
powerful and versatile to cope with
any emergency that may have been
encountered during the dangerous
tests. Gibson watched his instru-
ments carefully for signs of pursuit
until he had put a few million
miles between himself and the com-
mand ship. Then he eased his craft
into subspace drive and relaxed his
vigilance.

He returned to normal space

many “days” later in the vicinity
of Alpha Centauri. They may
have attempted to follow him for
all he knew, but it hardly mattered
by then. He broadcast the recogni-
tion signal he had been given to
memorize long ago, when he had
volunteered his services to the new
states. Then he headed for the cap-
ital planet, Nessus. Long before
reaching it, he acquired a lower-
ing escort of warcraft, but he was
permitted to land.

“Well, well, it’s young Gibson!”
the Chairman of Nessus greeted
him, after the newcomer had
passed through the exhaustive
screening designed to protect the
elaborate underground headquar-
ters. “I trust you have news for us,
my boy. Watch outside the door,
Colonel!”

One of the ostentatiously armed
guards stepped outside and closed
the door as Gibson greeted the
obese man sitting across the button-
studded expanse of desk. The scien-
tist was under no illusion as to the
vagueness of the title “Chairman.”
He was facing the absolute power
of the Centaurian planets — which,
in a few months’ time, would be the
same as saying the ruler of all the
human race in both systems. Gib-
son’s file must have been available
on the Chairman’s desk telescreen
within minutes of the reception of
his recognition signal. He felt a
thrill of admiration for the effici-
ency of the new states and their
system of government.

He made it his business to report
briefly and accurately, trusting that
the plain facts of his feat would at-
tract suitable recognition. They did.
Chairman Diamond’s sharp blue

IRRESISTIBLE WEAPON

eyes glinted out of the fat mask of
his features.

“Well done, my boy!” he grunted,
with a joviality he did not bother
trying to make sound overly sincere.
“So they have it! You must see our
men immediately, and point out
where they have gone wrong. You
may leave it to me to decide who
has gone wrong!”

Arnold GIBSON shivered in-
voluntarily before reminding
himself that he had seen the correct
answer proved before his eyes. He
had stood there and watched —
more, he had worked with them all
his adult life — and he was the last
whom the muddled fools would
have suspected.

The officer outside the door,
Colonel Korman, was recalled and
given orders to escort Gibson to the
secret state laboratories. He glanced
briefly at the scientist when they
had been let out through the com-
plicated system of safeguards.

“We have to go to the second
moon,” he said expressionlessly.
“Better sleep all you can on the way.
Once you’re there, the Chairman
will be impatient for results!”
Gibson was glad, after they had
landed on the satellite, that he had
taken the advice. He was led from
one underground lab to another, to
compare Centaurian developments
with Solarian. Finally, Colonel Kor-
man appeared to extricate him,
giving curt answers to such re-
searchers as still had questions.

“Whew! Glad you got me out!”
Gibson thanked him. “They’ve been
picking my brain for two days
straight!”

“I hope you can stay awake,” re-
torted Korman with no outward
sign of sympathy. “If you think you
can’t, say so now. I’ll have them
give you another shot. The Chair-
man is calling on the telescreen.”
Gibson straightened.

Jealous snob! he thought. Typical
military fathead, and he knows I
amount to more than any little
colonel now. I was smart enough to
fool all the so-called brains of the
Solar System.

“I’ll stay awake,” he said
shortly.

Chairman Diamond’s shiny fea-
tures appeared on the screen soon
after Korman reported his charge
ready.

“Speak freely,” he ordered Gib-
son. “This beam is so tight and
scrambled that no prying jackass
could even tell that it is communica-
tion. Have you set us straight?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” replied
Gibson. “I merely pointed out
which of several methods the Solar-
ians got to yield results. Your — our
scientists were working on all pos-
sibilities, so it would have been
only a matter of time.”

“Which you have saved us,” said
Chairman Diamond. His ice-blue
eyes glinted again. “I wish I could
have seen the faces of Haas and Co-
ordinator Evora, and the rest. You
fooled them completely!”

Gibson glowed at the rare praise.
“I dislike bragging. Your Excel-
lency,” he said, “but they are fools.
I might very well have found the
answer without them, once they had
collected the data. My success shows
what intelligence, well-directed
after the manner of the new states

H. B. FYFE

of Centauri, can accomplish against
inefficiency.”

The Chairman’s expression,
masked by the fat of his face, never-
theless approached a smile.

“So you would say that you — one
of our sympathizers — were actually
the most intelligent worker they
had?”

He’ll have his little joke, thought
Gibson, and I’ll let him put it over.
Then, even that sour colonel will
laugh with us, and the Chairman
will hint about what post I’ll get
as a reward. 1 wouldn’t mind be-
ing in charge — old Haas’ opposite
number at this end.

“I think I might indeed be per-
mitted to boast of that much ability.
Your Excellency,” he answered,
putting on what he hoped was an
expectant smile. “Although, con-
sidering the Solarians, that is not
saying much.”

The little joke did not develop
precisely as anticipated.

“Unfortunately,” Chairman Dia-
mond said, maintaining his smile
throughout, “wisdom should never
be confused with intelligence.”

Gibson waited, feeling his

own smile stiffen as he won-
dered what could be going wrong.
Surely, they could not doubt his
loyalty! A hasty glance at Colonel
Korman revealed no expression on
the military facade affected by that
gentleman.

“For if wisdom were completely
synonymous with intelligence,” the
obese Chairman continued, relish-
ing his exposition, “you would be a
rival to myself, and consequently
would be — disposed of — anyway!”

Such a tingle shot up Gibson’s
spine that he was sure he must have
jumped.

“Anyway?” he repeated huskily.
His mouth suddenly seemed dry.

Chairman Diamond smiled out
of the telescreen, so broadly that
Gibson was unpleasantly affected
by the sight of his small, gleaming,
white teeth.

“Put it this way,” he suggested
suavely. “Your highly trained mind
observed, correlated, and memo-
rized the most iiitricate data and
mathematics, meanwhile guiding
your social relations with your
former colleagues so as to remain
unsuspected while stealing their
most cherished secret. Such a feat
demonstrates ability and intelli-
gence.”

Gibson tried to lick his lips, and
could not, despite the seeming fair-
ness of the words. He sensed a puls-
ing undercurrent of cruelty and
cynicism.

“On the other hand,” the mellow
voice flowed on, “having received
the information, being able to u.se
it effectively now without you, and
knowing that you betrayed once —
I shall simply discard you like an
old message blank. That is an act of
wisdom.

“Had you chosen your course
more wisely,” he added, “your posi-
tion might be stronger.”

By the time Arnold Gibson re-
gained his voice, the Centaurian
autocrat was already giving instruc-
tions to Colonel Korman. The
scientist strove to interrupt, to at-
tract the ruler’s attention even mo-
mentarily.

Neither paid him any heed, until
he shouted and tried frenziedly to

IRRESISTIBLE WEAPON

shove the soldier from in front of
the telescreen. Korman backhanded
him across the throat without look-
ing around, with such force that
Gibson staggered back and fell.

He lay, half-choking, grasping
his throat with both hands until he
could breathe. The colonel contin-
ued discussing his extinction with-
out emotion.

“. . . so if Your Excellency agrees,
I would prefer taking him back to
Nessus first, for the sake of the
morale factor here. Some of them
are so addled now at having been
caught chasing up wrong alleys
that they can hardly work.”

Apparently the Chairman
agreed, for the screen was blank
when the colonel reached down
and hauled Gibson to his feet.

“Now, listen to me carefully!” he
said, emphasizing his order with a
ringing slap across Gibson’s face.
“I shall walk behind you with my
blaster drawn. If you make a false
move, I shall not kill you.”

Gibson stared at him, holding his
bleeding mouth.

“It will be much worse,” Kor-
man went on woodenly. “Imagine
what it will be like to have both
feet charred to the bone. You
would have to crawl the rest of the
way to the ship; I certainly would
not consider carrying you!”

In a nightmarish daze, Gibson
obeyed the cold directions, and
walked slowly along the under-
ground corridors of the Centaurian
research laboratories. He prayed
desperately that someone — anyone
— might come along. Anybody who
could possibly be used to create a
diversion, or to be pushed into Kor-
man and his deadly blaster.

The halls remained deserted,
possibly by arrangement.

Maybe I’d better wait till we
reach his ship, Gibson thought. I
ought to he able to figure a way be-
fore we reach Nessus. I had the
brains to fool Haas and . . .

He winced, recalling Chairman
Diamond’s theory of the difference
between intelligence and wisdom.

The obscene swine! he screamed
silently.

Colonel Korman grunted warn-
ingly, and Gibson took the indi-
cated turn.

They entered the spaceship from
an underground chamber, and
Gibson learned the reason for his
executioner’s assurance when the
latter chained him to one of the
pneumatic acceleration seats. The
chain was fragile in appearance, but
he knew he would not be free to
move until Korman so desired.

More of their insane brand of
cleverness! he reflected. That’s the
sort of thing they do succeed in
thinking of. They’re all crazy! Why
did I ever . . .

But he shrank from the question
he feared to answer. To drag out
into the open his petty, selfish rea-
sons, shorn of the tinsel glamor of
so-called “service” and “progress,”
would be too painful.

After the first series of

accelerations, he roused himself
from his beaten stupor enough to
note that Korman was taking a
strange course for reaching Nessus.
Then, entirely too close to ‘the
planet and its satellites to ensure

(Continued on page 118)

A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape
reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.

A BOTTLE OF

OU Wine

By Richard O. Lewis

Illustrated by KELLY FREAS

"LTERBERT HYREL settled him-
self more comfortably in his
easy chair, extended his short legs
further toward the fireplace, and let
his eyes travel cautiously in the gen-
eral direction of his wife.

She was in her chair as usual, her
long legs curled up beneath her,
the upper half of her face hidden
in the bulk of her personalized,
three-dimensional telovis. The telo-
vis, of a stereoscopic nature, seem-
ingly brought the performers with
all their tinsel and color directly
into the room of the watcher.

Hyrel had no way of seeing into
the plastic affair she wore, but he
guessed from the expression on the
lower half of her face that she was
watching one of the newer black-
market sex-operas. In any event,
there would be no sound, move-
ment, or sign of life from her for
the next three hours. To break the
thread of the play for even a mo-

ment would ruin all the previous
emotional build-up.

There had been a time when he
hated her for those long and silent
evenings, lonely hours during
which he was completely ignored.
It was different now, however, for
those hours furnished him with
time for an escape of his own.

His lips curled into a tight smile
and his right hand fondled the un-
obtrusive switch beneath his trou-
ser leg. He did not press the switch.
He would wait a few minutes
longer. But it was comforting to
know that it was there, exhilara-
ting to know that he could escape
for a few hours by a mere flick of
his finger.

He let his eyes stray to the dim
light of the artificial flames in the
fireplace. His hate for her was not
bounded merely by those lonely
hours she had forced upon him.
No, it was far more encompassing.

RICHARD O. LEWIS

He hated her with a deep, burn-
ing savagery that was deadly in its
passion. He hated her for her
money, the money she kept securely
from him. He hated her for the
paltry allowance she doled out to
him, as if he were an irresponsible
child. It was as if she were con-
stantly reminding him in every
glance and gesture, “I made a bad
bargain when I married you. You
wanted me, my money, everything,
and had nothing to give in return
except your own doltish self. You
set a trap for me, baited with lies
and a false front. Now you are
caught in your own trap and will
remain there like a mouse to eat
from my hand whatever crumbs I
stoop to give you.”

But some day his hate would be
appeased. Yes, some day soon he
would kill her!

He shot a sideways glance at her,
wondering if by chance she sus-
pected . . . She hadn’t moved. Her
lips were pouted into a half smile;
the sex-opera had probably
reached one of its more pleasur-
able moments.

Hyrel let his eyes shift back to
the fireplace again. Yes, he would
kill her. Then he would claim
a rightful share of her money, be
rid of her debasing dominance.

He let the thought run
around through his head, sa-
voring it with mental taste buds.
He would not kill her tonight. No,
nor the next night. He would wait,
wait until he had sucked the last
measure of pleasure from the
thought.

It was like having a bottle of

rare old wine on a shelf where it
could be viewed daily. It was like
being able to pause again and
again before the bottle, hold it up
to the light, and say to it, “Some
day, when my desire for you has
reached the ultimate, I shall un-
stopper you quietly and sip you
slowly to the last soul-satisfying
drop.” As long as the bottle re-
mained there upon the shelf it was
symbolic of that pleasurable mo-
ment. . . .

He snapped out of his reverie
and realized he had been wasting
precious moments. There would be
time enough tomorrow for gloat-
ing. Tonight, there were other
things to do. Pleasurable things.
He remembered the girl he had
met the night before, and smiled
smugly. Perhaps she would be
awaiting him eVen now. If not,
there would be another one. . .

He settled himself deeper into
the chair, glanced once more at his
wife, then let his head lean com-
fortably back against the chair’s
headrest. His hand upon his thigh
felt the thin mesh that cloaked his
body beneath his clothing like a
sheer stocking. His fingers went
again to the tiny switch. Again he
hesitated.

Herbert Hyrel knew no more
about the telporter suit he wore
than he did about the radio in the
corner, the TV set against the wall,
or the personalized telovis his wife
was wearing. You pressed one of
the buttons on the radio; music
came out. You pressed a button
and clicked a dial on the TV ;
music and pictures came out. You
pressed a button and made an ad-
justment on the telovis; three di-

A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE

itiensional, emotion-colored pic-
tures leaped into the room. You
pressed a tiny switch on the telpor-
ter suit ; you were whisked away to
a receiving set you had previously
set up in secret.

He knew that the music and the
Images of the performers on the
Tv and telovis were brought to his
room by some form of electrical im-
pulse or wave while the actual mu-
sicians and performers remained in
the studio. He knew that when he
pressed the switch on his thigh
something within him — his ecto-
plasm, higher self, the thing spirits
use for materialization, whatever
its real name — streamed out of him
along an invisible channel, leaving
his body behind in the chair in a
conscious but dream-like state. His
other self materialized in a small
cabin in a hidden nook between a
highway and a river where he had
installed the receiving set a month
ago.

He thought once more of the girl
who might be waiting for him,
smiled, and pressed the switch.

'T'HE DANK AIR of the cabin
was chill to Herbert Hyrel’s
naked flesh. He fumbled through
the darkness for the clothing he
kept there, found his shorts and
trousers, got hurriedly into them,
then flicked on a pocket lighter and
ignited a stub of candle upon the
table. By the wavering light, he fin-
ished dressing in the black satin
clothing, the white shirt, the flow-
ing necktie and tarn. He invoiced
the contents of his billfold. Not
much. And his monthly pittance
was still two weeks away. . .

He had skimped for six months
to salvage enough money from his
allowance to make a down pay-
ment on the telporter suit. Since
then, his expenses — monthly pay-
ments for the suit, cabin rent, costly
liquor — had forced him to place his
nights of escape on strict ration. He
could not go on this way, he real-
ized. Not now. Not since he had
met the girl. He had to have more
money. Perhaps he could not af-
ford the luxury of leaving the wine
bottle longer upon the shelf ....

Riverside Club, where Hyrel ar-
rived by bus and a hundred yards
of walking, was exclusive. It ca-
tered to a clientele that had but
three things in common: money, a
desire for utter self-abandonment,
and a sales slip indicating owner-
ship of a telporter suit. The club
was of necessity expensive, for self-
telportation was strictly illegal, and
police protection came high.

Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white,
silken mask carefully at the door
and shoved his sales slip through a
small aperture where it was thor-
oughly scanned by unseen eyes. A
buzzer sounded an instant later, the
lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel
pushed through into the exhilara-
ting warmth of music and laughter.

The main room was large. Hid-
den lights along the walls sent slow
beams of red, blue, Vermillion,
green, yellow and pink trailing
across the domed ceiling in a het-
erogeneous pattern. The colored
beams mingled, diffused, spread,
were caught up by mirrors of vari-
ous tints which diffused and min-
gled the lights once more until the
whole effect was an ever-changing
panorama of softly-melting shades.

RICHARD O. LEWIS

The gay and bizarre costumes of
the masked revelers on the dance
floor and at the tables, unearthly in
themselves, were made even more
so by the altering light. Music
flooded the room from unseen
sources. Laughter — hysterical,
drunken, filled with utter abandon-
ment— came from the dance floor,
the tables, and the private booths
and rooms hidden cleverly within
the walls.

Hyrel pushed himself to an un-
occupied table, sat down and or-
dered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He
would have preferred champagne,
but his depleted finances forbade
the more discriminate taste.

When his order arrived, he
poured a glass tumbler half full
and consumed it eagerly while his
eyes scanned the room in search of
the girl. He couldn’t see her in the
dim swirl of color. Had she ar-
rived? Perhaps she was wearing a
different costume than shs had the
night before. If so, recognition
might prove difficult. '

He poured himself another drink,
promising himself he would go in
search of her when the liquor be-
gan to take effect.

A woman clad in the revealing
garb of a Persian dancer threw an
arm about him from behind and
kissed him on the cheek through
the veil which covered the lower
part of her face.

“Hi, honey,” she giggled into his
ear. “Havin’ a time?”

He reached for the white arm to
pull her to him, but she eluded his
grasp and reeled away into the
waiting arms of a tall toreador.
Hyrel gulped his whiskey and
watched her nestle into the arms of

her partner and begin with him a
sinuous, suggestive dance. The
whiskey had begun its warming ef-
fect, and he laughed.

This was the land of the lotus
eaters, the sanctuary of the escap-
ists, the haven of all who wished to
cast off their shell of inhibition and
become the thing they dreamed
themselves to be. Here one could
be among his own kind, an actor
upon a gay stage, a gaudy butter-
fly metamorphosed from the slug,
a knight of old.

The Persian dancing girl was
probably the wife of a boorish oaf
whose idea of romance was spend-
ing an evening telling his wife how
he came to be a successful bank
president. But she had found her
means of escape. Perhaps she had
pleaded a sick headache and had
retired to her room. And there upon
the bed now reposed her shell of
reality while her inner self, the
shadowy one, completely material-
ized, became an exotic thing from
the East in this never-never land.

The man, the toreador, had
probably closeted himself within his
library with a set of account books
and had left strict orders not to be
disturbed until he had finished
with them.

Both would have terrific hang-
overs in the morning. But that, of
course, would be fully compensated
for by the memories of the evening.

Plyrel chuckled. The situation
struck him as being funny: the
shadowy self got drunk and had a
good time, and the outer husk suf-
fered the hangover in the morning.
Strange. Strange how a device such
as the telporter suit could cause the
shadow of each bodily cell to leave

A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE

the body, materialize, and become
a reality in its own right. And

yet . . .

"LTE LOOKED at the heel of his
left hand. There was a long,
irregular scar there. It was the re-
sult of a cut he had received near-
ly three weeks ago when he had
fallen over this very table and had
rammed his hand into a sliver of
broken champagne glass. Later that
evening, upon re-telporting back
home, the pain of the cut had re-
mained in his hand, but there was
no sign of the cut itself on the hand
of his outer self. The scar was pe-
culiar to the shadowy body only.
There was something about the
shadowy body that carried the
hurts to the outer body, but not the
scars . . .

Sudden laughter broke out near
him, and he turned quickly in that
direction. A group of gaily cos-
tumed revelers was standing in a
semi-circle about a small mound of
clothing upon the floor. It was the
costume of the toreador.

Hyrel laughed, too. It had hap-
pened many times before — a cos-
tume suddenly left empty as its
owner, due to a threat of discovery
at home, had had to press the
switch in haste to bring his shad-
owy self — and complete conscious-
ness— back to his outer self in a
hurry.

A waiter picked up the clothing.
He would put it safely away so that
the owner could claim it upon his
next visit to the club. Another
waiter placed a fresh bottle of
whiskey on the table before Hyrel,
and Hyrel paid him for it.

The whiskey, reaching his head
now in surges of warm cheerful-
ness, was filling him with abandon-
ment, courage, and a desire for
merriment. He pushed himself up
from the table, joined the merry
throng, threw his arm about the
Persian dancer, drew her close.

They began dancing slowly to
the throbbing rhythm, dancing and
holding on to each other tightly.
Hyrel could feel her hot breath
through her veil upon his neck, add-
ing to the headiness of the liquor.
His feeling of depression and inferi-
ority flowed suddenly from him.
Once again he was the all-conquer-
ing male.

His arm trembled as it drew her
still closer to him and he began
dancing directly and purposefully
toward the shadows of a clump of
artificial palms near one comer of
the room. There was an exit to the
garden behind the palms.

Half way there they passed a se-
cluded booth from which pro-
truded a long leg clad in black
mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he
recognized that part of the cos-
tume. It was she! The girl! The
one he had met so briefly the night
before!

His arm slid away from the Per-
sian dancer, took hold of the mesh-
clad leg, and pulled. A female form
followed the leg from the booth
and fell into his arms. He held her
tightly, kissed her white neck, let
her perfume send his thoughts reel-
ing.

“Been looking for me, honey?”
she whispered, her voice deep and
throaty.

“You know it!”

He began whisking her away to-

RICHARD O. LEWIS

ward the palms. The Persian girl
was pulled into the booth.

Yes, she was wearing the same
costume she had worn the night
before, that of a can-can dancer of
the 90’s. The mesh hose that en-
cased her shapely legs were held up
by flowered supporters in such a
manner as to leave four inches of
white leg exposed between hose top
and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled
to suggest innumerable petticoats,
fell away at each hip, leaving the
front open to expose the full length
of legs. She wore a wig of platinum
hair encrusted with jewels that
sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-
studded mask was as white as her
hair and covered the upper half of
her face, except for the large
almond slits for her eyes. A white
purse, jewel crusted, dangled from
one arm.

He stopped once before reaching
the palms, drew her closer, kissed
her long and ardently. Then he be-
gan pulling her on again.

She drew back when they
reached the shelter of the fronds.
“Champagne, first,” she whispered
huskily into his ear.

His heart sank. He had very lit-
tle money left. Well, it might buy
a cheap brand ....

SHE SIPPED her champagne
slowly and provocatively across
the table from him. Her eyes spar-
kled behind the almond slits of her
mask, caught the color changes and
cast them back. She was wearing
contact lenses of a garish green.

He wished she would hurry with
her drink. He had horrible visions
of his wife at home taking off her

telovis and coming to his chair. He
would then have to press the
switch that would jerk his shadowy
self back along its invisible con-
necting cord, jerk him back and
leave but a small mound of clothes
upon the chair at the table.

Deep depression laid hold of
him. He would not be able to see
her after tonight until he received
his monthly dole two weeks hence.
She wouldn’t wait that long. Some-
one else would have her.

Unless . . .

Yes, he knew now that he was
going to kill his wife as soon as the
opportunity presented itself. It
would be a simple matter. With the
aid of the telporter suit, he could
establish an iron-clad alibi.

He took a long drink of whiskey
and looked at the dancers about
him. Sight of their gay costumes
heightened his depression. He was
wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he
could afford. But some day soon he
would show them! Some time soon
he would be dressed as gaily . . .

“Something troubling you,
honey?”

His gaze shot back to her and
she blurred slightly before his eyes.
“No. Nothing at all!” He sum-
moned a sickly smile and clutched
her hand in his. “Come on. Let’s
dance.”

He drew her from the chair and
into his arms. She melted toward
him as if desiring to become a part
of him. A tremor of excitement
surged through him and threat-
ened to turn his knees into quiver-
ing jelly. He could not make his
feet conform to the flooding
rhythm of the music. He half stum-

A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE

bled, half pushed her along past the
booths.

In the shelter of the palms he
drew her savagely to him. “Let’s —
let’s go outside.” His voice was lit-
tle more than a croak.

“But, honey!” She pushed her-
self away, her low voice madden-
ing him. “Don’t you have a private
room? A girl doesn’t like to be
taken outside . . . .”

Her words bit into his brain like
the blade of a hot knife.

No, he didn’t have a private
room at the club like the others. A
private room for his telporter re-
ceiver, a private room where he
could take a willing guest. No! He
couldn’t afford it! No! No! NO!
His lot was a cheap suit of satin!
Cheap whiskey! Cheap cham-
pagne! A cheap shack by the
river . . .

An inarticulate cry escaped his
twisted lips. He clutched her rough-
ly to him and dragged her through
the door and into the moonlight,
whiskey and anger lending him
brutal strength.

He pulled her through the de-
serted garden. All the others had
private rooms! He pulled her to
the far end, behind a clump of
squatty firs. His hands clawed at
her. He tried to smother her mouth
with kisses.

She eluded him deftly. “But,
honey!” Her voice had gone deeper
into her throat. “I just want to be
sure about things. If you can’t af-
ford one of the private rooms — if
you can’t afford to show me a good
time — if you can’t come here real
often . .

The whiskey pounded and
throbbed at his brain like blows

from an unseen club. His ego
curled and twisted within him like
a headless serpent.

“I’ll have money!” he shouted,
struggling to hold her. “I’ll have
plenty of money! After tonight!”
“Then we’ll wait,” she said.
“We’ll wait until tomorrow night.”
“No!” he screamed. “You don’t
believe me! You’re like the others!
You think I’m no good! But I’ll
show you! I’ll show all of you!”

SHE HAD GONE coldly rigid in
his arms, unyielding.

Madness added to the pounding
in his brain. Tears welled into his
eyes.

“I’ll show you! I’ll kill her! Then
I’ll have money!” The hands
clutching her shoulders shook her
drunkenly. “You wait here! I’ll go
home and kill her now! Then I’ll
be back!”

“Silly boy!” Her low laughter
rang hollowly in his ears. “And just
who is it you are going to kill?”
“My wife!” he cried. “My wife!

I’ll . . .”

A sudden sobering thought
struck him. He was talking too
much. And he wasn’t making sense.
He shouldn’t be telling her this.
Anyway, he couldn’t get the money
tonight even if he did kill his wife.

“And so you are going to kill
your wife . . .

He blinked the tears from his
eyes. His chest was heaving, his
heart pounding. He looked at her
shimmering form. “Y-yes,” he whis-
pered.

Her eyes glinted strangely in the
light of the moon. Her handbag
glinted as she opened it, and some-

RICHARD 0. LEWIS

thing she took from it glittered
coldly in her hand.

“Fool!”

The first shot tore squarely
through his heart. And while he
stood staring at her, mouth agape,
a second shot burned its way
through his bewildered brain.

A/TRS. HERBERT HYREL re-
moved the telovis from her
head and laid it carefully aside.
She uncoiled her long legs from be-
neath her, walked to her husband’s
chair, and stood for a long moment
looking down at him, her lips
drawn back in contempt. Then she
bent over him and reached down
his thigh until her fingers contacted
the small switch.

Seconds later, a slight tremor
sjiook Hyrel’s body. His eyes
snapped open, air escaped his lungs.

his lower jaw sagged inanely, and
his head lolled to one side.

She stood a moment longer,
watching his eyes become glazed
and sightless. Then she walked to
the telephone.

“Police?” she said. “This is Mrs.
Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible
has happened to my husband.
Please come over immediately.
Bring a doctor.”

She hung up, went to her bath-
room, stripped off her clothing,
and slid carefully out of her tel-
porter suit. This she folded neatly
and tucked away into the false back
of the medicine cabinet. She found
a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pa-
jamas and got into them.

She was just arriving back into
the living room, tying the cord of
her dressing gown about her slim
waist, when she heard the sound of
the police siren out front.

THE END

DEPARTMENT OF SAFE PREDICTIONS

CAUTIOUSLY, modestly, and with full knowledge of the quantities
of fine science fiction being published these days, we guarantee that
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, by James Blish, will rate as one of the
best five short novels of 1953. An outstandingly complete and con-
vincing examination of an alien planet and its civilization ; a compel-
ling portrait of a highly unusual, and unusually human, hero; a sus-
penseful development of a complex problem which will leave you
with plenty to ponder and argue — this is the stuff of which classics
are made, and it’s coming in the September issue (on sale July 10).
IF is proud of this story; you won’t want to miss it!

Sound the fanfare! Beat the drums!
Shout hosannas! Here he comes , . .

CELEBRITY

By James McKimmey, Jr.

Illustrated by PAUL ORBAN

JUNE 19, 1978. Celebrity day. monds. A bird chirped. Another.

The city stretched. Empty The city yawned,
streets glistened from the bath of Rows of houses lay like square
a water truck. Dew-wet grass ivory beads on patches of green
winked at the fresh peeping sun, felt. A boy drove his bicycle down
like millions of shimmering dia- the middle of an elm-bordered av-

JAMES McKIMMEY, JR.

enue, whistling loudly, while tightly
rolled newspapers arced from his
hand and slapped against porches,

Lights snapped on in a thousand
windows, shining yellowly against
the cool whiteness of dawn. Men
blinked and touched beard-stub-
bled chins. Women moved sleepily
toward porcelain and chrome kitch-
ens.

A truck roared and garbage pails
rattled. There was a smell of sour
orange rinds and wet leaves and un-
folding flowers. Over this came the
smell of toasting bread and frying
bacon.

Doors swung open, slippered feet
padded across porches and hands
groped for the rolled newspapers.
The air was stricken with the blar-
ing sound of transcribed music and
the excited voices of commercial
announcers. The doors swung shut
and the sounds were muted.

A million people shifted and
stretched and scratched. The sun
rose above the horizon.

Celebrity day.

Doors slammed again,

and half-consumed cups of
coffee lay cooling behind. Children
wiped at sleepy eyes and mothers
swept crumbs, touching self-con-
scious fingers at their own bed-ruf-
fled hair. Laborers and clerks and
lawyers and doctors strode down
sidewalks and climbed into automo-
biles and busses and sleek-nosed ele-
vated trains. The city moved.

To the center of the city, where
the tall buildings stretched to the
lighting sky, came the horde, like
thousands of ants toward a comb of
honey. Wheels sang and whined.

Horns blasted. Whistles blew.

And waiting, strung above the
wide streets between the cold mar-
quees and the dead neon tubes,
were the banners and the flags and
the bunting.

The air warmed and the sun
brightened. Voices chattered. El-
bows nudged. Mouths smiled, teeth
shone, and there was the sound of
laughter, rising over the pushing
throngs. The city was happy.

The bunting dipped and the
banners fluttered and the flags
whipped. At the edge of the city,
the airport tightened itself. Wait-
ing, waiting for the silver and blue
rocket. The rocket of the Celebrity.

A large hotel, towering above the
pulsing streets, began the quiver of
activity. As though a great electric
current had been run through its
cubes and shafts and hollows, the
hotel crackled. Desk clerks clicked
bells and bell boys hopped. Eleva-
tors rose and fell. In the cellar,
wine bottles were dusted by quick,
nervous hands. In the kitchen, a
towering cake was frosted and dec-
orated. Orders cracked. Hands
flew and feet chattered against tile.
In one rich expansive suite a giant
hoop of multi-colored flowers was
placed in the center of a room.

It was in the air. Laughter, awe,
worship, excitement!

Ropes went up and stretched be-
tween lamp posts. Blue-coated men
on horses began blocking streets.
Old women with wooden boxes,
children with flashing eyes, men in
rich suits and tattered suits began
filling the sidewalks.

Curbs became lined with people.
Bars threw open doors and fresh
air met stale air. Men with fat

CELEBRITY

faces, thin faces, white faces, red
faces, twitching with the anticipa-
tion of holiday freedom, gulped
jiggers of raw whiskey and shud-
dered happily.

Children giggled and yelled and
sprinted in crazy zig-zags. Men in
white caps hustled in front of the
lined curbs, shouting, carrying
their boxes of ice-cream. Men with
buttons, men with pennants, men
with balloons joined the shouting,
and the sound rose in the air and
the city smiled and shifted and its
heart pounded.

The hotel whirred inside itself.
The airport tensed and searched the
sky.

IME MOVED and the swell-
ing throngs jammed the side-
walks, raising their strengthening
sound between the tall buildings.
Windows popped open and faces
beamed. Tentative showers of con-
fetti drifted down through the air.

The city waited, its pulse thump-
ing.

The rocket was a black point in
the sky. It grew. White-suited men
scattered over the landing strip.
Photographers crouched. Bulbs
snapped into reflectors. Cameras
pointed.

The rocket landed. A door
snapped open. Blue uniforms con-
verged and flash bulbs popped.
There were shouts and orders and

men running. Gates swung and
there was a blue-rimmed move-
ment to a black open car. Sirens
moaned, screamed. And the black
car was moving swiftly into the
city.

Beneath the buildings, marching
bands in red and blue and yellow
uniforms stood assembled. Girls in
short skirts and tassled hats spun
silver batons into the warm air.
Bare legs kicked. Black boots
flashed.

The crowd swayed against the
ropes, and there was laughter and
sweating and squinting.

The black car reached the heart
of the city. Sirens died. Rows of
men snapped to attention. Police-
men aligned their motorcycles.

A baton shimmered high against
the sun and came down.

A cymbal crashed. Drums
cracked. Music blared. And there
was a movement down the street.

The black car rolled along, while
tape swept down from the build-
ings in long swirling ribbons. There
was a snow of confetti. And from
the throats of the people came the
first roar. It grew, building, build-
ing in volume, and the city thun-
dered its welcome to the man sit-
ting upon the back of the open car,
the small man who tipped his hat
and smiled and blinked behind his
glasses: Joseph S. Stettison, B.A.,
B.S., M.S., M.D., Ph.D., L.M.
(Hon.), F.R.C.O.G.

THE END

C.I.B. Agent Pell used his head, even if he did rely on hunches
more than on the computer. In fact, when the game got rough,
he found that to use his head, he first had to keep it ,

Brink of

MADNESS

By Walt Sheldon

Illustrated by KELLY FREAS

The night the visitors came
Richard Pell worked late
among the great banks of crimino-
logical computers. He whistled to
himself, knowing that he was way
off key but not caring. Ciel, his
wife, was still in his mind’s eye;
he’d seen her on the viewer and
talked with her not ten minutes ago.

“Be home shortly, baby,” he’d
said, “soon as I fill in a form or
two.”

“All right, dear. I’ll wait,” she’d
answered, with just the slightest
tone of doubt.

It was an important night. It
was at once their second anniver-
sary and the beginning of their sec-
ond honeymoon. Just how Pell —
knobby, more or less homely, and
easygoing — had won himself a

lovely, long-limbed blonde like Ciel
was something of a mystery to
many of their friends. She could
hardly have married him for his
money. Central Investigation Bu-
reau agents were lucky if all their
extras and bonuses brought them
up to a thousand credits a year.

Pell had unquestionably caught
her in a romantic moment. Maybe
that was part of the trouble — part
of the reason they needed this sec-
ond honeymoon, this period of re-
acquaintance so badly. Being the
wife of a C.I.B. agent meant sitting
at home nine-tenths of the time
while he was working on a case, and
then not hearing about the case for
security reasons during the one-
tenth of the time he was with her.

Four times now Pell had been

WALT SHELDON

ready to take his vacation; four
times last minute business had come
up. No more, though, by golly. To-
night he’d get out of here just as
quickly as . . .

The Identifier, beyond the door,
began to hum. That meant some-
body was putting his hand to the
opaque screen, and if the scanner
recognized the fingerprints the
door would open. Pell scowled at
the bulky shadows outside.

“Go away, whoever you are,” he
muttered to himself.

Some of the other agents were
out there, no doubt; they were al-
ways getting sudden inspirations
late at night and returning to use
the computers again. In fact, it had
been tactifully suggested to Agent
Richard Pell that he might use the
computers a little more himself in-
stead of relying on hunches as he
so often did. “Investigation’s a cold
science, not a fancy art,” Chief
Larkin was fond of saying to the
group — with his eyes on Pell.

Well, whoever it was. Pell was
definitely through. No time-wasting
conversation for him! He was
ready for six glorious weeks of
saved-up vacation time. He and
Ciel, early tomorrow, would grab
a rocket for one of the Moon re-
sorts, and there they’d just loaf and
relax and pay attention to each
other. Try to regain whatever it
was they’d had. . . .

The door opened and Chief
Larkin walked in.

Chief Eustace J. Larkin was tall,
in his forties, bu+ still boyishly hand-
some. He dressed expensively and

well. He was dynamic and confident
and he always had about him just
the faintest aroma of very expensive
shaving cologne. He had a Master’s
degree in criminology and his rise
to the post of Director, C.I.B., had
been sudden, dramatic and impres-
sive. Not the least of his talents was
a keen sense of public relations.

“I — uh — was on my way out,”
said Pell. He reached for his hat.
Funny about hats: few people trav-
eled topside anymore, and in the
climate-conditioned tunnels you
didn’t need a hat. But C.I.B.
agents had to be neat and digni-
fied; regulations required hats and
ties and cuffs and lapels. Thus, you
could always spot a C.I.B. agent a
mile away.

Larkin had a dimple when he
smiled and Pell would bet he knew
it. “We’d have called your home if
we hadn’t found you here. Sit
down, Dick.”

Pell sat glumly. For the first
time, he noticed the men who had
come in with the Chief. He recog-
nized both. One was fiftyish, tall,
solidly-built and well-dressed on
the conservative side. His face was
strong, square and oddly pale, as if
someone had taken finest white
marble and roughly hacked a face
into it. Pell had seen that face in
faxpapers often. The man was
Theodor Rysland, once a wealthy
corporation lawyer, now a World
Government adviser in an unoffi-
cial way. Some admired him as a
selfless public servant; others swore
he was a power-mad tyrant. Few
were indifferent.

“I’m sure you recognize Mr. Rys-
land,” said Chief Larkin, smiling.

BRINK OF MADNESS

“And this is Dr. Walter Nebel, of
the World Department of Educa-
tion.”

Dr. Walter Nebel was slight and
had a head remarkably tiny in pro-
portion to the rest of him. He wore
cropped hair. His eyes were turtle-
lidded and at first impression sleepy,
and then, with a second look — ■
wary. Pell remembered that he had
won fame some time ago by discov-
ering the electrolytic enzyme in the
thought process. Pell wasn’t sure
exactly what this was, but the fax-
papers had certainly made a fuss
about it at the time.

He shook hands with the two
men and then said to Larkin,
“What’s up?”

“Patience,” said Larkin and
shuffled chairs into place.

Rysland sat down solidly and
gravely; Nebel perched. Rysland
looked at Pell with a strong, level
stare and said, “It’s my sincere
hope that this meeting tonight will
prevent resumption of the war with
Venus.”

Larkin said, “Amen.”

Pell stared back in some surprise.
High-level stuff!

Rysland saw his stare and
chuckled. “Chief Larkin tells me
your sympathies are more or less
Universalist. Not that it would be
necessary, but it helps.”

“Oh,” said Pell, with mild be-
wilderment. The difference be-
tween the Universal and Defense
parties was pretty clear-cut. The
Universalists hoped to resume full
relations with Venus and bring
about a really secure peace through
friendship and trade. It would ad-
mittedly be a tough struggle, and

the Defenders didn’t think it was
possible. Forget Venus, said they;
fortify Earth, keep the line of de-
marcation on Mars, and sit tight.

“But there is, as you may know,”
said Rysland, “a third course in our
relations with Venus.”

“There is?” asked Pell. From the
corner of his eye he saw Chief Lar-
kin looking at him with an expres-
sion of — what, amusement? Yes,
amusement, largely, but with a
touch of contempt, too, perhaps.
Hard to say.

“The third course,” said Rys-
land, not smiling, “would be to at-
tack Venus again, resume the war,
and hope to win quickly. We know
Venus is exhausted from the recent
struggle. A sudden, forceful attack
might possibly subjugate her. At
least, that is the argument of a cer-
tain group called the Supremists.”

Dr. Nebel spoke for the first
time. Pell realized that the man
had been watching him closely. His
voice was sibilant ; it seemed to drag
itself through wet grass. “Also Ve-
nus Is psychologically unprepared
for war; the Supremists believe that,
too.”

Pell reached back into his mem-
ory. The Supremists. They were a
minor political party — sort of a cult,
too. The outfit had sprung up in
the last year or so. Supremists be-
lieved that Earthmen, above all
other creatures, had a destiny —
were chosen — were supreme. They
had several followers as delegates in
World Congress. General impres-
sion: slightly crackpot.

“The Supremists,” said Theodor
Rysland, tapping his hard, white
palm, and leaning forward, “have

WALT SHELDON

been calling for attack. Aggression.
Starting the war with Venus all
over again. And they’re not only a
vociferous nuisance. They have an
appeal in this business of Earth-
man’s supremacy. They’re gaining
converts every day. In short,
they’ve now become dangerous.”

ELL THOUGHT it over as
Rysland talked. Certainly the
idea of renewed war was nightmar-
ish. He’d been in the last one: who
hadn’t? It had started in 2117, the
year he was born, and it had
dragged on for twenty-five years
until T-day and the truce. The
causes? Well, both Earth and Ve-
nus worked the mineral deposits on
Mars unimpeded by the non-in-
telligent insectile life on that
planet, and the original arguments
had been about those mineral de-
posits, though there were enough
for a dozen planets there. The
causes were more complicated and
obscure than that. Semantics, part-
ly. There was freedom as Earth-
men saw it and freedom as the Ve-
nusians saw it. Same with honor
and good and evil. They were al-
ways two different things. And
then Venusians had a greenish
tinge to their skins and called the
Earthmen, in their clicking lan-
guage, “Pink-faces.” And both
Earthmen and Venusians hated
like the devil to see the other get
away with anything.

Anyway, there had been war,
terrible war. Space battle, air bat-
tle, landing, repulse. Stalemate. Fi-
nally, through utter weariness per-
haps, truce. Now, a taut, uneasy,
suspicious peace. Communications

opened, a few art objects mutually
exchanged. Immigration for a few
Venusian dancers or students or
diplomats. It wasn’t much, but it
was all in the right direction. At
least Pell felt so.

Rysland was saying: “We’re not
sure, of course, but we suspect —
we jeel — that more than mere acci-
dent may be behind these Suprem-
ists.”

“What do you mean by that?”
“Someone seeking power, per-
haps. As I said, we don’t know.
We want to find out. Dr. Nebel has
been interested for some time in
the curious psychology of these Su-
premists — their blind, unthinking
loyalty to their cause, for instance.
He is, as you know, a special assist-
ant in the Department of Educa-
tion. He asked my help in arrang-
ing for an investigation, and I
agreed with him wholeheartedly
that one should be made.”

“And I told these gentlemen,”
said Chief Larkin, “that I’d put a
detail on it right away.”

Now Pell believed he saw
through it. Larkin didn’t believe it
was important at all; he was just
obliging these Vips. A man couldn’t
have too many friends in World
Government circles, after all. But of
course Larkin couldn’t afford to
put one of his bright, machine-
minded boys on it, and so Pell was
the patsy.

“Could I remind you,” said Pell,
“that my vacation is supposed to
start tomorrow?”

“Now, now, Dick,” said Larkin,
turning on the personality, “this
won’t take you long. Just a routine
report. The computers ought to

BRINK OF MADNESS

give you all the information you
need in less than a day.”

“That’s what you always say, ev-
ery time I’m ready to take a vaca-
tion. I’ve been saving up for two
years now . . .

“Dick, that’s hardly the right at-
titude for an agent who is so close
to making second grade.”

Larkin had him over a barrel,
there. Pell desperately wanted to
make his promotion. Second-grad-
ers didn’t spend their time at the
control banks gathering data; they
did mostly desk work and evalu-
ation. They had a little more time
to spend with their wives. He said,
“Okay, okay,” and got up.

“Where are you going?”

“To get my wife on the viewer
and tell her I won’t be home for a
while after all.”

He left the three of them
chuckling and thought: He jests at
scars who never felt a wound. He
didn’t say it aloud. You could quote
formulae or scientific precepts in
front of Larkin, but not Shake-
speare.

He PUNCHED OUT his home
number and waited until
Ciel’s image swirled into the view-
plate. His heart went boppety-bop
as it always did. Hair of polished
gold. Dark eyes, ripe olives, a little
large for her face and sometimes
deep and fathomless. She wore a
loose, filmy nightgown and the sug-
gestion of her body under it was
enough to bring on a touch of mad-
ness in him.

“Let me say it,” Ceil said. She
wasn’t smiling. “You won’t be

home for a while. You’ve got an-
other case.”

“Well — ^yes. That’s it, more or
less.” Pell swallowed.

“Oh, Dick.”

“I’m sorry, honey. It’s just that
something important came up. I’ve
got a conference on my hands. It
shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“And we were supposed to leave
for the moon in the morning.”

“Listen, baby, this is absolutely
the last time. I mean it. As soon as
this thing is washed up we’ll really
take that vacation. Look, I’ll tell
you what. I’ll meet you somewhere
in an hour. We’ll have some fun —
take in a floor show — drink a little
meth. We haven’t done that in a
long time. How about the Stardust
Cafe? I hear they’ve got a terrific
new mentalist there.”

Ciel said, “No.”

“Don’t be like that. We need an
evening out. It’ll hold us until I get
this new case washed up. That
won’t be long, but at least we’ll
have a little relaxation.”

Ciel said, “Well . . .”

“Attababy. One hour. Absolute-
ly. You just go to Station B-90,
take the lift to topside and it’s right
on Shapley Boulevard there. You
can’t miss it.”

“I know where it is,” said Ciel.
She shook her finger. “Richard
Pell, so help me, if you stand me up
this time . . .”

“Baby!” he said in a tone of
deep injury.

“Goodbye, Dick.” She clicked
off.

Pell had the feeling that even the
free-flowing meth and the gaiety of
the Stardust Cafe wouldn’t really

WALT SHELDON

help matters much. He sighed
deeply as he turned and went back
into the other room.

Chapter II

A LITTLE OVER an hour
later he stepped from the
elevator kiosk at Station B-90 and
breathed the night air of topside.
It was less pure actually than the
carefully controlled tunnel air, but
it was somehow infinitely more
wonderful. At least to a sentimen-
tal primitive boob like Richard Pell,
it was. Oh, he knew that it was in-
finitely more sensible to live and
work entirely underground as peo-
ple did these days — but just the
same he loved the look of the black
sky with the crushed diamonds of
stars thrown across it and he loved
the uneven breeze and the faint
smell of trees and grass.

This particular topside section
was given over to entertainment;
all about him were theaters and
cafes and picnic groves and air-
ports for flying sports. A few hun-
dred feet ahead he could see the
three-dimensional atmospheric pro-
jection that marked the Stardust
Cafe, and he could hear faintly the
mournful sound of a Venusian la-
ment being played by the askarins.
He was glad they hadn’t banned
Venusian music, anyway, although
he wouldn’t be surprised if they
did, some day.

That was one of the things these
Supremists were trying to do. Rys-
land and Chief Larkin had given
him a long and careful briefing on
the outfit so that he could start

work tomorrow with his partner,
Steve Kronski. Steve, of course,
would shrug phlegmatically, swing
his big shoulders toward the com-
puter rooms and say, “Let’s go to
work.” It would be just another as-
signment to him.

As a matter of fact, the job
would be not without a certain
amount of interest. There were a
couple of puzzling things about
these Supremists that Rysland had
pointed out. First of all, they didn’t
seem to be at all organized or in-
corporated. No headquarters, no
officers that anybody knew about.
They just were. It was a complete
mystery how a man became a Su-
premist, how they kept getting new
members all the time. Yet you
couldn’t miss a Supremist when-
ever you met one. Before the con-
versation was half over he’d start
spouting about the destiny of
Earthmen and the general inferior-
ity of all other creatures and so on.
It sounded like hogwash to Pell. He
wondered how such an attitude
could survive in a scientific age.

Nor would a Supremist be essen-
tially a moron or a neurotic; they
were found in all walks of life, at
all educational and emotional lev-
els. Rysland told how he had ques-
tioned a few, trying to discover
when, where and how they joined
the movement; Apparently there
was nothing to join, at least to hear
them tell it. They just knew one day
that they were Supremists, and that
was the word. Rysland had shaken
his head sadly and said, “Their be-
lief is completely without logic —
and maybe that’s what makes it so
strong. Maybe that’s what fright-
ens me about it.”

BRINK OF MADNESS

KAY, TOMORROW then
Pell would tackle it. Tomor-
row he’d think about it. Right now
he had a date with his best girl.

He entered the cafe and the
music of the askarins swirled more
loudly about his head and he
looked through the smoke and col-
ored light until he spotted Ciel sit-
ting in a rear booth. The place was
crowded. On the small dance floor
before the orchestra nearly nude
Venusian girls were going through
the writhing motions of a serpen-
tine dance. Their greenish skins
shimmered iridescently. The sad-
faced Venusian musicians on the
band-stand waved their graceful,
spatulated fingers over thair curi-
ous, boxlike askarins, producing
changing tones and overtones by
the altered capacitance. A rocket-
man in the black and silver uni-
form of the Space Force was trying
to stumble drunkenly out on to the
floor with the dancers and his
friends were holding him back.
There was much laughter about the
whole thing. The Venusian girls
kept dancing and didn’t change
their flat, almost lifeless expressions.

Ciel looked up without smiling
when he got to the booth. She had
a half-finished glass of meth before
her. .

He tried a smile anyway. “Hello,
baby.” He sat down.

She said, “I didn’t really think
you’d get here. I could have had
dates with exactly eleven spacemen.
I kept count.”

“You have been faithful to me,
Cynara, in your fashion. I need a
drink and don’t want to wait for
the waitress. Mind?” He took her
half glass of meth and tossed it

down. He felt the wonderful illu-
sion of an explosion in his skull, and
it seemed to him that his body was
suddenly the strongest in the world
and that he could whip everybody
in the joint with one arm tied be-
hind his back. He said, “Wow.”
Ciel tried a smile now. “It does
that to you when you’re not used
to it.”

The first effect passed and he
felt only the warmth of the drink.
He signaled a waitress and ordered
a couple more. “Don’t forget to re-
mind me to take a hangover pill
before I go to work in the morn-
ing,” he told Ciel.

“You — you are going to work in
the morning, then?”

“Afraid I can’t get out of it.”
“And the moon trip’s off?”

“Not off, just postponed. We’ll
get to it, don’t worry.”

“Dick.”

“Yes?”

“I can take it just so' long, put-
ting our vacation off and off and
off.” Her eyes were earnest, liquid
and opaque. “I’ve been thinking
about it. Trying to arrive at some-
thing. I’m beginning to wonder,
Dick, if maybe we hadn’t just bet-
ter, well — call it quits, or some-
thing.”

He stared at her. “Baby, what
are you saying?”

A SUDDEN, fanfare-like blast
from the orchestra inter-
rupted. They looked at the dance
floor. There was a flash of light, a
swirling of jnist, and within the
space of a second the Venusian
girls suddenly disappeared and
their place was taken by a tall.

hawk-nosed, dark-eyed man with a
cloak slung dramatically over one
shoulder. The audience applauded.

“That’s Marco, the new mental-
ist,” said Pell.

Ciel shrugged to show that she
wasn’t particularly impressed.
Neither was Pell, to tell the truth.
Mentalists were all the rage, partly
because everybody could practice a
little amateur telepathy and hypno-
tism in his own home. Mentalists,
of course, made a career of it and
were much better at it than any-
body else.

Their drinks came and they
watched Marco go through his act
in a rather gloomy silence. Marco
was skillful, but not especially un-
usual. He did the usual stuff;
calling out things that people wrote
on slips of paper, calling out dates
on coins, and even engaging in
mental duels wherein the chal-
lenger wrote a phrase, concealed it
from Marco, and then deliberately
tried to keep him from reading it
telepathically. He had the usual
hypnotism session with volunteers
who were certain they could resist.
He made them hop around the
stage like monkeys, burn their fin-
gers on pieces of ice, and so on.
The audience roared with laugh-
ter. Pell and Ciel just kept staring.

When Marco had finished his act
and the thundering applause had
faded the Venusian dancing girls
came back on the stage again.

Ciel yawned.

Pell said, “Me, too. Let’s get out
of here.”

It wasn’t until they were home in
their underground apartment and
getting ready for bed that Ciel
turned to him and said, “You see?”

WALT SHELDON

He was buttoning his pajamas.
“See what?”

“It’s us, Dick. It’s not the floor
show, or the meth, or anything —
it’s us. We can’t enjoy anything to-
gether any more.”

He said, “Now wait a minute . . .”

But she had already stepped into
the bedroom and slammed the
door. He heard the lock click.

“Hey,” he said, “what am I sup-
posed to do, sleep out here?”

, He took the ensuing silence to
mean that he was.

And he did.

The next morning, as he

came into the office. Pell
scowled deeply and went to his desk
without saying good morning to
anybody. Ciel had kept herself
locked in the bedroom and he had
made his own breakfast. How it
was all going to end he didn’t
know. He had the feeling that she
was working herself up to the de-
cision to leave him. And the real
hell of it was that he couldn’t
exactly blame her.

“Morning, partner,” said a voice
above him. He looked up. Way up.
Steve Kronski was built along the
general lines of a water buffalo.
The usual battered grin was
smeared across his face. “I see we
got a new assignment.”

"Oh — did Larkin brief you on it
already?”

“Yeah. Before I could get my
hat off. Funny set-up, all right. I
punched for basic data before you
got in. Hardly any.”

“Maybe that means something in
itself. Maybe somebody saw to it
that the information never got

BRINK OF MADNESS

into the central -banksu”

Tlie C.I.B. computers could be
hooked into the central banks which
stored information on nearly every-
thing and everybody. If you incor-
porated, filed for a patent, paid
taxes, voted, or just were born, the
central banks had an electronic
record of it.

Kronski jerked his thumb toward
the computer room. “I punched for
names of Supremist members
coupla minutes ago. Thought may-
be we could start in that way.”

Pell followed, his mind not really
on the job yet. He wasn’t at his
best working with the computers,
and yet operating them was ninety
per cent of investigation. He sup-
posed he’d get used to it sometime.

Three walls of the big computer
room were lined with control racks,
consisting mostly of keyboard set-
ups. Code symbols and index cards
were placed in handy positions. The
C.I.B. circuits, of course, were
adapted to the specialized work of
investigation. In the memory banks
of tubes and relays there was a
master file of all names — aliases and
nicknames included — with which
the organization had ever been con-
cerned. Criminals, witnesses, com-
plaints, everyone. Code numbers
linked to the names showed where
data on their owner could be found.
A name picked at random might
show that person to have data in
the suspect file, the arrest file, the
psychological file, the modus oper-
and! file, and so forth. Any of the
data in these files could be checked,
conversely, against the names.

Kronski walked over to where let-
ter sized cards were flipping from a
slot into a small bin. He said.

“Didn’t even have to dial in Cen-
tral Data for these. Seems we got a
lot of Supremist members right in
our own little collection.”

Pell picked up one of the cards
and examined it idly. Vertical col-
umns were inscribed along the card,
each with a heading, and with fur-
ther sub-headed columns. Under
the column marked Modus Oper-
andi, for instance, there were sub-
columns titled Person Attacked,
Property Attacked, How Attacked,
Means of Attack, Object of Attack,
and Trademark. Columns of digits,
one to nine, were under each item.
If the digits 3 and 2 were punched
under Trademark the number 32
could be fed into the Operational
Data machine and this machine
would then give back the informa-
tion on a printed slip that number
32 stood for the trademark of leav-
ing cigar butts at the scene of the
crime.

“Got five hundred now,” said
Kronski. “I’ll let a few more run
in case we need alternates.”

“Okay,” said Pell. “I’ll start this
batch through the analyzer.”

He took the cards across the room
to a machine about twenty feet
long and dropped them into the
feeder at one end. Channels and
rollers ran along the top of this
machine and under them were a
series of vertical slots into which
the selected cards could drop. He
cleared the previous setting and ran
the pointer to Constants. He set
the qualitative dial to 85%. This
meant that on the first run the
punch hole combinations in the
cards would be scanned and any
item common to 85% of the total
would be registered in a relay. Up-

on the second run the machine
would select the cards with this con-
stant and drop them into a slot cor-
responding with that heading. Fur-
ther scanning, within the slot itself,
would pick out the constant num-
ber.

Pell started the rollers whirring.

Kronski came over. He rubbed
his battered nose. “Hope we get
outside on this case. I’m gettin’
sick o’ the office. Haven’t been out
in weeks.”

Pell nodded. Oh, for the life of
a C.I.B. man. In teleplays they cor-
nered desperate criminals in the
dark ruins of the ancient cities top-
side, and fought it out with freezers.
The fact was, although regulations
called for them to carry freezers in
their shoulder holsters, one in a
thousand ever got a chance to use
them.

Pell said, “Maybe you need a
vacation.”

“Maybe. Only I keep putting my
vacation off. Got a whole month
saved up now.”

“Me, too.” Pell sighed. Ciel
would probably be pacing the floor
back home now, trying to make up
her mind. To break it up, or not
to break it up? There would be no
difficulty, really: she had been a
pretty good commercial artist be-
fore they were married and she
wouldn’t have any trouble finding
a job again somewhere in World
City.

The rollers kept whirring and
the cards flipping along with a whis-
pering sound.

“Wonder what we’re looking in-
to these Supremists for?” asked
Kronski. “I always thought they

WALT SHELDON

were some kind of harmless crack-
pots.”

“The Chief doesn’t think so.
Neither does Theodor Rysland.” He
told Kronski more about the inter-
view last night.

Presently the machine stopped,
clicked several times and began roll-
ing the other way.

“Well, it found something,” said
Kronski.

They kept watching. Oh, for the
life of a C.I.B. man. Cards began
to drop into one of the slots. The
main heading was Physical and the
sub-heading Medical History. Pell
frowned and said, “Certainly didn’t
expect to find a constant in this
department.” He picked up a few
of the first cards and looked at
them, hoping to catch the constant
by eye. He caught it. “What’s 445
under this heading?”

RONSKI SAID, “I’ll find
out,” and stepped over to the
Operational Data board. He
worked it, took the printed slip that
came out and called back; “Record
of inoculation.”

“That’s a funny one.”

“Yup. Sure is.” Kronski stared at
the slip and scratched his neck. “It
must be just any old kind inocula-
tion. If it was special — like typhoid
or tetanus or something — it’d have
another digit.”

“There must be some other boil-
downs, if we could think of them.”
Pell was frowning heavily. Some of
the other men, used to the ma-
chines, could grab a boil-down out
of thin air, run the cards again and
get another significant constant.
The machine, however, inhibited

BRINK OF MADNESS

Pell. It made him feel uneasy and
stupid whenever he was around it.

“How about location?” suggested
Kronski.

Pell shook his head. “I checked
a few by eye. All different numbers
under location. Some of ’em come
from World City, some from Mars
Landing, some from way out in the
sticks. Nothing significant there.”

“Maybe what we need is a cup
of coffee.”

Pell grinned. “Best idea all morn-
ing. Come on.”

Some minutes later they sat
across from each other at a table in
the big cafeteria on the seventy-
third level. It was beginning to be
crowded now with personnel from
other departments and bureaus.
The coffee urge came for nearly
everybody in the government offices
at about the same time. Pell was
studying by eye a handful of spare
data cards he’d brought along and
Kronski was reading faxpaper clip-
pings from a large manila envelope
marked Supremist Party. Just on a
vague hunch Pell had viewplated
Central Public Relations and had
them send the envelope down by
tube.

“Prominent Educator Addresses
Supremist Rally,” Kronski mut-
tered. “Three Spaceport Cargomen
Arrested at Supremist Riot. Young
Supremists Form Rocket Club.
Looks like anybody and everybody
can be a Supremist. And his grand-
mother. Wonder how they do it?”

“Don’t know.” Pell wasn’t really
listening.

“And here’s a whole town went
over to the Supremists. On the
moon.”

“Uh-huh,” said Pell.

Kronski sipped his coffee loudly.
A few slender, graceful young men
from World Commerce looked at
him distastefully. “Happened just
this year. New Year they all went
over. Augea, in the Hercules Moun-
tains. Big celebration.”

Pell looked up and said, “Wait
a minute. . .”

“Wait for what? I’m not goin’
anywhere. Not on this swivel-chair
of a job, damn it.”

“New Year they all become
Supremists. And the last week of
December everybody on the moon
gets his inoculations, right?”
“Search me.”

“But I know that. I found that
out when I was tailing those two
gamblers who had a place on the
moon, remember?”

“So it may be a connection.”
Kronski shrugged.

“It may be the place where we
can study a bunch of these cases
in a batch instead of picking ’em
one by one.”

“You mean we oughta take a
trip to the moon?”

“Might not hurt for a few days.”
Kronski was grinning at him.
“What are you grinning at?”
“First you got to stay over on
your vacation, so you can’t go to
the moon with your wife. Now all
of a sudden you decide duty has
got to take you to the moon, huh?”
Pell grinned back then. “What
are you squawking about? You said
you wanted to get out on this case.”
Kronski, still grinning, got up.
“I’m not complaining. I’m just
demonstrating my powers of deduc-
tion, as they say in teleplays. Come
on, let’s go make rocket reserva-
tions.”

WALT SHELDON

Chapter III

The big tourist rochet let

them down at the Endymion
Crater Landing, and they went
through the usual immigration and
customs formalities in the under-
ground city there. They stayed in a
hotel overnight, Pell and Ciel look-
ing very much like tourists, Kron-
ski tagging along and looking faintly
out of place. In the morning —
morning according to the 24 hour
earth clock, that is — they took the
jitney rocket to the resort town of
Augea, in the Hercules Mountains.
The town was really a cliff dwell-
ing, built into the side of a great
precipice with quartz windows over-
looking a tremendous, stark valley.

It was hard to say just what at-
traction the moon had as a vaca-
tion land, and it was a matter of
unfathomable taste. You either
liked it, or you didn’t. If you didn’t,
you couldn’t understand what peo-
ple who liked it saw in it. They
couldn’t quite explain. “It’s so
quiet. It’s so vast. It’s so beautiful,”
they’d say, but never anything
clearer than that.

Augea itself was like twenty other
resorts scattered throughout both
the northern and southern latitudes
of the moon. Except for the mili-
tary posts and scientific research
stations the moon had little value
other than as a vacation land. Peo-
ple came there to rest, to look at
the bizarre landscape through
quartz, or occasionally to don
spacesults and go out on guided
exploration trips.

Immediately after checking into
their hotel Pell and Kronski got di-

rections to the office of the Resident
Surgeon and prepared to go there.
Ciel looked on quietly as Pell
tightened the straps of his shoulder
holster and checked the setting on
his freezer.

Ciel said, “I knew it.”

“Knew what, honey?” Pell went
to the mirror to brush his hair. He
wasn’t sure it would materially im-
prove the beauty of his long, knob-
by, faintly melancholy face, but he
did it any way.

“The minute we get here you
have to go out on business.”

He turned, kissed her, then held
and patted her hand. “That’s just
because I want to get it over with.
Then I’ll have time for you. Then
we’ll have lots of time together.”
She melted into him suddenly.
She put her arms around .his neck
and held him tightly. “If I didn’t
love you, you big lug, it wouldn’t
be so bad. But, Dick, I can’t go on
like this much longer. I just can’t.”
“Now, baby,” he started to say.
There was a knock on the door
then and he knew Kronski was
ready. He broke away from her,
threw a kiss and said, “Later. Later,
baby.”

She nodded and held her under
lip in with her upper teeth.

He sighed and left.

PELL AND KRONSKI left the
hotel and started walking along
the winding tunnel with the side
wall of quartz. On their right the
huge valley, with its stark, imearthly
landshapes, stretched away. It was
near the end of the daylight period
and the shadows from the distant
peaks, across the valley, were long

BRINK OF MADNESS

and deep. Some of them, with little
reflected light, seemed to be patches
of nothingness. Pell fancied he
could step through them into an-
other dimension.

All about them, even here in the
side of the mountain, and behind
the thick quartz, there was the odd,
utterly dead silence of the moon.

Their footsteps echoed sparsely in
the corridor.

Pell said to Kronski, “Got the
story all straight?”

“Like as if it was true.”
“Remember the signal?”

“Sure. Soon as you say we’re out
of cigarettes. What’s the matter,
you think I’m a moron, I can’t re-
member?”

Pell laughed and clapped him on
the shoulder blade.

Minutes later they turned in from
the corridor, went through another,
shorter passageway and then came
to a door marked; Resident Sur-
geon. They knocked and a deep
voice boomed: “Come in!”

It was a medium-sized room,
clearly a dispensary. There was an
operating table, a sterilizer, tall
glass-fronted instrument cabinets
and a refrigerator. At, the far end of
the room a hulking, bear-like man
sat behind a magnalloy desk. The
nameplate on the desk said: Hal
H. Wilcox, M.D.

“Howdy, gents,” said Dr. Hal H.
Wilcox, shattering the moon-silence
with a vengeance. “What can I do
for you?” he was all smiles.

That smile, decided Pell, didn’t
quite match the shrewdness of his
eyes. Have to watch this boy, may-
be. There was a big quartz window
behind the man so that for the mo-
ment Pell saw him almost in sil-

houette. “We’re from Current
magazine,” said Pell. “I’m Dick
Pell and this is Steve Kronski. You
got our radio, I guess.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.” Wilcox
creaked way back in his chair.
“You’re the fellas want to do a
story on us moon surgeons.”

“That’s right.” Pell fumbled a
little self-consciously with the gravi-
ty weights clipped to his trousers.
Took a while for moon visitors t6
get used to them, everybody said.

“Well, I don’t know exactly as
how there’s much of a story in what
we do. We’re just a bunch of saw-
bones stationed here, that’s all.”
“We’re interested in the diseases
peculiar to the moon,” said Pell.
“For instance, why do the perma-
nent residents up here have to have
an inoculation every year?”
“That’s for the Venusian rash.
Thought everybody knew that.”
“Venusian rash?”

“Nearest thing we ever had to it
on Earth was Rocky Mountain
Spotted Fever. It’s a rickettsia
disease. Makes a fella pretty sick;
sometimes kills Lim in two, three
days. It started when they had those
Venusian construction workers and
tunnel men here, oh, long before
the war. Under certain conditions
the rickettsia stays dormant and
then pops up again.”

“And the inoculation’s for that?”
“Standard. Once a year. You
got the inoculation yourself, no
doubt, before you jumped off for
the moon.”

“Where does the serum or what-
ever you call it come from?”

Pell thought he saw Wilcox’s eyes
flicker. The doctor said, “It’s
stored at the main landings. We

draw it as we need it from there.”

“Have any here now?”

Wilcox’s eyes did move this time.
He looked at the refrigerator — but
only for the veriest moment. “Don’t
really reckon so,” he said finally.
He was staring blankly at Pell
again.

Pell patted his pockets, turned
to Kronski and said, “You know, I
think we’re out of cigarettes.” Be-
fore Kronski could answer he
moved to the big quartz window
behind Wilcox’s desk. He gazed at
the moonscape. “Just can’t get over
how big and quiet it is,” he said.

Wilcox turned and gazed with
him.

Kronski drew his freezer. He
pointed it, squeezed, and there was
a soft, momentary buzzing and a
twinkling of violet sparks at the
muzzle of the weapon.

Wilcox sat where he was, frozen,
knowing nothing.

PELL TURNED FAST. “Come
on, Steve. Let’s get it.” They
both stepped to the refrigerator.

They had only seconds; Kronski’ s
weapon had been set at a low read-
ing. The time of paralysis varied
with the individual and Doc Wil-
cox looked husky enough not to
stay frozen very long. If Pell and
Kronski returned to their original
positions after he came out of it
he would never know that anything
had happened.

Far back on a lower shelf of the
refrigerator were a dozen small
bottles of the same type. Pell
grabbed one, glanced at the label,
nodded, and dropped it into his

WALT SHELDON

pocket. They took their places
again.

A few moments later Wilcox
moved slightly and said, “Yup.
Moon’s a funny place all right. You
either like it or you don’t.”

The rest of the conversation was
fairly uninspired. Pell didn’t want
to walk out too quickly, and had
to keep up the pretense of inter-
viewing Wilcox for a magazine
story. It wasn’t easy. They excused
themselves finally, saying they’d be
back for more information as soon
as they made up some notes and
got the overall picture — whatever
that meant. Wilcox seemed satisfied
with it.

They hurried back along the tun-
nel, descended to another level and
found the Augea Post Office. They
showed the postmaster their C.I.B.
shields and identification cards
and arranged for quick and special
handling for the bottle of vaccine.
Pell marked it Attention, Lab, and
it was scheduled to take a quick
rocket to the Endymion landing and
the next unmanned mail rocket
back to World City.

Pell stayed at the Post Office to
make out a quick report on the
incident so he wouldn’t have to
bore Ciel by doing it in the room,
and Kronski sauntered on back to
the hotel.

There was a fax receiver there
and Pell, missing the hourly voice
bulletins of World City Under-
ground, checked it for news. The
pages were coming out in a long
tongue. He looked at the first head-
line:

VENUSIAN OBSERVERS AD-
MITTED TO WORLD CONGRESS

BRINK OF MADNESS

Well, that was a step in the right
direction. Maybe one of these days
they’d get around to a Solar Con-
gress, as they ought to. The recent
open war with Venus had taught
both Earthmen and Venusians a lot
about space travel, and it was prob-
ably possible to explore the solar
system further right now. No one
had yet gone beyond the asteroids.
Recent observations from the tele-
scope stations here on the moon had
found what seemed to be geometri-
cal markings on some of Jupiter’s
satellites. Life there? Could be.
Candidates for a brotherhood of
the zodiac — if both Terrans and
Venusians could get the concept of
brotherhood pounded through their
still partially savage skulls.

Another headline;

'WE CAN LICK UNIVERSE'
—WAR SEC

Not so good, that. Loose talk.
Actually it was an Undersecretary
of War who had said it. Pell ran
over the rest of the article quickly
and came to what seemed to him
a significant excerpt. “Certain pa-
triotic groups in the world today
are ready and willing to make the
necessary sacrifices to get it over
with. There is a fundamental dif-
ference between Earthmen and
other creatures of the system, and
this difference can be resolved only
by the dominance of one over the
other.”

Supremist stuff. Strictly. If this
Undersecretary were not actually a
member he was at least a supporter
of the Supremist line. And that line
had an appeal for the unthinking,
Pell had to admit. It was pleasant

to convince yourself that you were
a superior specimen, that you were
chosen. . . .

VENUSIAN SPY SUSPECTS HELD
ON MARS

Pell frowned deeply at that one
and read the story. A couple of
Venusian miners on Mars had wan-
dered too close to one of the Earth
military outposts, and had been
nabbed. He doubted that they were
spies; he doubted that the authori-
ties holding them thought so. But it
seemed to make a better story with
a slight scare angle. He thought
about how Mars was divided at an
arbitrary meridian — half to Venus,
half to Earth. The division solved
nothing, pleased nobody. Joe Citi-
zen, the man in the tunnels could
see these things, why couldn’t these
so-called trained diplomats?

Pell finished his report, ques-
tioned the Postmaster a little on
routine facts concerning the town,
and went back to the hotel.

lEL WAS WAITING for him.
She was in a smart, frontless
frock of silvercloth. Her golden hair
shone. Her large, dark eyes looked
deep, moist, alive. She looked at
him questioningly and he read the
silent question : Now can you spare
a little time?

“Baby,” he said softly, and kissed
her.

“Mm,” he said when he had
finished kissing her.

The voice-phone rang.

He said, “Damn it.”

It was Kronski, in his own room

WALT SHELDON

next door. “Did Wilcox leave yet?”
he asked.

“Wilcox?”

“Yeah. The Doc. Is he still
there?”

“I didn’t know he was here at
all.”

Kronski said, “Huh?”

Pell said, “Maybe we better back
up and start all over again.”
“Wilcox, the Resident Surgeon
Doc Wilcox,” said Kronski, not too
patiently. “He was in my room a
little while ago. Said he’d drop by
on his way out and see if you were
in.”

Pell glanced at Ciel. She was busy
lighting a cigarette at the other
end of the room. Or pretending to
be busy. Pell said, “I just got here.
Just this minute. I didn’t see any
Wilcox. What’d he want?”

“I don’t know exactly. He was
kind of vague about it. Wanted to
know if he could answer any more
questions for us, or anything like
that.”

“Sounds screwy.”

“Yeah. It sure does, now that I
think it over.”

“Let me call you back,” said Pell
and hung up. He turned to Ciel.
“Was Doc Wilcox here?”

“Why, yes. He stopped in.”
Nothing but blank innocence on
her face.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hm?” She raised her eyebrows.
“He just stopped in to see if you
were here, that was all. I told him
you weren’t and he went out
again.”

“But you didn’t mention it.”
“Well, why should I?”

“I don’t know. I’d think you’d
say something about it.”

“Now, listen, Dick — I’m not
some suspect you’re grilling. What’s
the matter with you, anyway?”

“It just strikes me as funny that
Wilcox should drop in here and
you shouldn’t say one word about
it, that’s all.”

“Well, I like that.” She folded
her arms. “You’re getting to be so
much of a cop you’re starting to be
suspicious of your own wife.”

“Now, you know it’s not that at
all.”

“What else is it? Dick, I’m sick
of it. I’m sick of this whole stupid
business you’re in. The first time we
get a few minutes alone together
you start giving me the third de-
gree. I won’t stand for it, that’s
all!”

“Now, baby,” he said and took a
step toward her.

The deeper tone of the viewer
sounded.

** A GH, FOR PETE’S sake,” he
Mol. said disgustedly and an-
swered the call. The image of Chief
Larkin’s boyishly handsome face
came into focus on the screen. Pell
lifted a surprised eyebrow and said,
“Oh, hello, Chief.”

Larkin’s eye was cold. Especially
cold in the setting of that boyish
face. “What in hell,” he asked,
“are you and Kronski doing on the
moon?”

“Hm?” Now it was Pell’s turn to
look innocent. “Why, you know
what we’re doing. Chief. We’re in-
vestigating that case. You know the
one — I don’t want to mention it
over the viewer.”

“Who the devil authorized you

BRINK OF MADNESS

to go traipsing to the moon to do
it?”

“Why, nobody authorized us. I
thought — I mean, when you’re
working on a case and you have a
lead, you’re supposed to go after it,
aren’t you?”

“Yes, but not when it’s a crazy
wild goose chase.” In the viewer
Pell saw the Chief slam his desk
with the palm of his hand. “I’d like
to know what in blazes you think
you can do on the moon that you
can’t do in a good healthy session
at the computers?”

“Well, that’s kind of hard to ex-
plain over the viewer. We have
made some progress, though. I just
sent you a report on it.”

Larkin narrowed one eye. “Pell,
who do you think you’re fooling?”

“Fooling?” ■

“You heard me. I know damn
well you wanted to take a vacation
on the moon. But we have a little
job for you that holds you up, and
what do you do? The next best
thing, eh? You see to it that the job
takes you to the moon.”

“Now, Chief, it wasn’t that at
all ”

“The devil it wasn’t. Now, listen
to me. Pell. You pack your bags
and get right back to World City.
The next rocket you can get. You
understand?”

Before he answered the question
he looked at Ciel. She was staring
at him quietly. Again he could read
something of what was in her mind.
He knew well enough that she was
trying to say to him: "Make a
clean break now. Tell him No, you
won’t come back. Quit. Now’s the
time to do it — unless you want that
stupid job of yours more than you

want me ...”

Pell sighed deeply, slowly looked
into the viewer again and said,
“Kronski and I’ll be back on the
next rocket. Chief.”

Ch^ter rV

Back again in the under-
ground offices of C.I.B., Agent
Richard Pell plunged into his job.
Up to his neck. It was the only way
he could keep from brooding about
Ciel. She was somewhere in the city
at this very moment and if he
really wanted to take the trouble
he’d be able to find her easily
enough — but he didn’t want it to
happen that way. She’d never
really be his again unless she came
to him ....

And so once more he found him-
self in the office late at night.
Alone. Poring over the lab reports
that had come in that afternoon,
turning them over in his mind and
hoping, he supposed, for a nice in-
tuitive flash, free of charge.

As a matter of fact the analysis
of the vaccine he’d lifted from Wil-
cox’s dispensary was not without
significance. There was definitely
an extraneous substance. The only
question was just, what this sub-
stance might be. Take a little longer
to find that out, the report said.

It made Pell think of the corny
sign World Government officials al-
ways had on their desks, the one
about doing the difficult right away
and taking a little longer for the
impossible. Some day, when he was
a big-shot, he would have a sign on
his desk saying: Why make things

WALT SHELDON

difficult when with even less effort
you can make them impossible? Of
course, ideas like that were prob-
ably the very reason he’d never be
a big-shot ....

The Identifier humming. Some-
one coming again.

He looked up, and then had the
curious feeling of being jerked back
in time to several nights ago. Chief
Larkin and Theodor Rysland en-
tered.

“Hello, Dick,” said Larkin, with
a touch of studied democracy. He
glanced at the government adviser
as if to say: See? Knew we’d find
him here.

Pell made a sour face. “Some
day I’m going to stop giving all this
free overtime. Some day I’m not
going to show up at all.”

Rysland smiled, dislodging some
of the rock strata of his curiously
pale face. He seemed a little weary
this evening. He moved slowly and
with even more than his usual dig-
nity. He said, “I hope, Mr. Pell,
that you’ll wait at least until you
finish this job for us. I understand
you’ve made some progress.”

Pell shrugged and gestured at the
lab report. “Progress, maybe — but
I don’t know how far. Just a bunch
of new puzzles to be perfectly
frank.”

Rysland sat down at the other
desk and drummed on it with his
fingertips. He looked at Pell grave-
ly. “As a matter of fact, since we
last talked to you the situation has
become even more urgent. A Su-
premist congressman introduced a
bill today before the world dele-
gates which may prove very dan-
gerous. Perhaps you know the one
I refer to.”

“I was too busy to follow the
news today,” said Pell, looking
meaningfully at Larkin.

Larkin didn’t seem to notice.

Rysland said, “I’ll brief you then.
The bill purports to prohibit ma-
terial aid of any kind to a non-
Terran government. That means
both credit and goods. And since
the only real non-Terran govern-
ment we know is Venus, it’s ob-
viously directed specifically at the
Venusians.”

Pell thought it over. High level
stuff again. He nodded to show he
followed.

“On the surface,” continued
Rysland, “this would seem to be a
sort of anti-espionage bill. Actually,
it’s a deliberately provocative act. I
know the Venusians will take it
that way. But right now certain
quarters are secretly trying to ne-
gotiate a trade treaty with Venus
which would be a major step to-
ward peaceful relations. If this bill
became law, such a treaty would be
impossible.”

“But World Congress isn’t likely
to pass such a bill, is it? Won’t they
see through it?”

Rysland frowned. “That’s what
we’re not sure of. Messages are
pouring in urging passage— all of
them from Supremists, of course.
The Supremists are relatively few,
but they make a lot of noise. Some-
times noise like that is effective. It
could swing a lot of delegates who
don’t see the real danger of this bill
and are at the moment undecided.
The Defender side, with its desire
to isolate and fortify, is especially
susceptible.”

“That is bad,” said Pell thought-
fully.

BRINK OF MADNESS

MYSLAND put his palm on
the desk. “Now then, if we can
somehow discredit the Supremists
— get to the bottom of this thing
quickly enough — I’m sure that bill
will be killed. I came here tonight,
I suppose, out of pure anxiety. In
other words, Mr. Pell, just how far
are you?”

Pell smiled and shook his head.
“Not very, I’m afraid. This Su-
premist thing is the damndest I
ever came across. No central head-
quarters, no officers, no propaganda
mill — entirely word of mouth as
far as I can see. No way of finding
out how it started, or even how the
new members are proselyted. Ask
any member how he became a Su-
premist. He just looks kind of
dreamy and mutters something
about the truth suddenly dawning
upon him one day.”

“But don’t you have any the-
ories?”

“I’ve got a hunch,” Pell said,
picking up the lab report.

Chief Larkin snorted softly. The
snort said clearly enough that an
efficient investigator didn’t depend
on hunches these days: he went
after something doggedly on the
computer, or by other approved
techniques.

Pell pretended not to hear the
snort. “First of all we discovered
that nearly all Supremists received
some kind of an inoculation before
they became Supremists. Then we
found a whole village, one of those
moon resort towns, that had gone
over. There was the record of inoc-
ulation there, too. I got hold of
some of the vaccine and had the
lab analyze it. It’s mostly vaccine
all right, but there is a foreign sub-

stance in it. Listen.” He read from
the report: “Isolated point oh six
jour seven grams unclassified crys-
tal compound, apparently form of
nucleotide enzyme. Further analysis
necessary.”

“You think this enzyme, or what-
ever it is, has something to do with
it?”

“I don’t know. All I have is a
pretty wild theory. To begin, when
our lab can’t analyze something
right away, it’s pretty rare — pos-
sibly even unknown to chemistry in
general. Now it’s just possible that
this substance does something to the
brain that makes a man into a Su-
premist, and that somebody’s be-
hind the whole thing, deliberately
planting the stuff so that people
here and there become injected
with it.”

“Pell.” Larkin made a pained
face. “Really.”

Pell shrugged. “Well, as I say, it’s
a hunch, that’s all.”

“It’s a pipe dream,” said Larkin.
“I never heard of anything so fan-
tastic.”

“That’s what folks said a couple
of centuries ago when the Venu-
sians were first trying to make con-
tact and their ships were sighted all
over the place. T never heard of
anything so fantastic,’ they all said.”

Theodor Rysland still looked in-
terested. “Granted there is some
connection between the Supremist
mental state and this, er, enzyme.
What then, Mr. Pell?”

“Well,” said Pell, stretching his
legs out, “I had an idea maybe
your friend Dr. Nebel could give
us some help on that.”

“Nebel?”

WALT SHELDON

“He’s interested in this thing,
isn’t he?”

“Definitely. Nebel’s a very public
spirited man.”

“Well, I understand he’s one of
the top psychobiologists in the
country today. Seems to me this
new enzyme, whatever it is, would
be right up his alley. Of course the
lab should get to it eventually, but
he might do it a lot quicker.”

Larkin had been examining some
statistical crime charts on the wall.
He turned from them. “Pell, does
Kronski know about all these wild
hunches of yours?”

“I haven’t talked with him
about them yet. He left today be-
fore the lab report came in. Why?”

“I was just wondering,” said
Larkin evenly, “whether I had two
maniacs in my organization or only
one,

Rysland, frowning, turned to the
chief. “I wouldn’t be hasty, Lar-
kin,” he said. “Crazy as it sounds
Pell may have something here.”

Larkin snorted again, and this
time along with it he shook his
head sadly.

“What’s your next move then?”
Rysland asked Pell.

“Tomorrow morning, first thing,”
Pell said, “I’ll take a sample, of this
stuff to Dr. Nebel and see what he
can do with it. Of course the lab
can keep on working on it in the
meantime.”

“Don’t you think you might do
better to get busy on those com-
puters?” Larkin asked.

Pell shook his head. “This hunch
is too strong, Chief.”

Rysland smiled, and got up.
“I’m inclined to put a little stock
into this man’s hunches. He’s done

pretty well with them so far. I’d
even say he’s pretty close to a solu-
tion of this thing — possibly.”

Larkin shrugged and started to
look at the crime charts again.

Rysland held out his hand.
“Good night, Mr. Pell. You’ve en-
couraged me. Larkin and I are go-
ing topside for a little night cap be-
fore we turn in. Like to join us?”

“No, thanks,” said Pell. “I’m
sleepy. I want to get home and hit
that sack.”

“Very well. Good night again.”
The two men went toward the
door.

Pell watched them quietly. He
had lied. He wasn’t sleepy at all.
He just wanted to get home and sit
by that viewer and hope, hope
against hope, that it would ring
and that Ciel’s lovely image would
swirl into view. . . .

ON THE WAY home he was
just the least bit tempted to
go topside, however. He thought
he might like to walk the broad,
quiet boulevards under the stars.
His brain functioned better there.
The tunnels were so clean and
bright and sterile, so wonderfully
functional and sensible, that they
oppressed him somehow. Maybe, he
sometimes thought, he wasn’t fit for
this age. Maybe he should have
been born a couple of hundred
years ago. But common sense told
him that people in that age must
have often thought exactly the
same thing to themselves.

He looked at his chrono and de-
cided he had better go home.

The apartment, when he came
to it, was cold and empty without

BRINK OF MADNESS

Ciel. He bathed and tried to keep
up his spirits by singing in his tune-
less way, but it didn’t help.

He went back into the living
room, selected a film from the li-
brary and slipped it into a lap pro-
jector. He sat down and tried to
concentrate on the film, a historical
adventure about the days of the
first moon rockets. He couldn’t fol-
low it.

The viewer rang.

He bounded from the chair as
though he had triggered a high
speed ejection seat in a burning jet.
He went to the viewer and flicked
it on. The plate shimmered, and
then Giel’s image came into focus.

“Baby!” He was certain his
shout overmodulated every amp
tube in the entire World City
viewer system. But he felt better,
wonderfully better, already.

She was smiling. “Hello, Dick.”

“Hello.”

And then they looked at each
other in afifectionate embarrassment
for a moment.

“One of us,” said Pell, “ought to
have his script writer along.”

“Dick, I don’t know exactly how
to say what I want to say . . . .”

“Don’t. Don’t say anything. Just
pretend nothing ever happened.
Just come on home fast as you
can.”

“No, Dick. Not yet. I still want
to talk about — well, everything.
Dick, we’ve got to reach some sort
of compromise. There must be a
way.”

“Come on home. We’ll find a
way.”

“Not home. Too many memories
there. Besides,” she smiled a little,
“I don’t trust us alone together. You

know what would happen. We
wouldn’t get any talking done. Not
any sensible talking anyway. You’d
better meet me someplace.”

He sighed. “Okay. Where can I
meet you?”

“How about the Stardust Cafe?”
“Again? That place didn’t help
us much the last time.”

“I know, but it’s the handiest.
I’m sure we can find a quiet place.
Out on the terrace or something.”
“Is there a terrace?”

“Yes, I think so. I’m sure there
must be.”

He looked at his chrono. “All
right, baby. Half an hour?”

“Half an hour.”

When she clicked of! he felt his
heart pounding. He felt dizzy. He
felt as though he had just taken a
quart of meth at one jolt — intra-
venously. He sang, more loudly and
more off-key than ever. He went
into the bedroom and started to get
dressed again.

It wasn’t until he was finishing
the knot in his tie that the hunch
hit him.

IT WAS FUNNY about that
hunch. He would have said it
came out of nowhere, and yet it
must have broken from the bottom
of his mind through some kind of
restraining layer into the conscious
levels. He didn’t remember .think-
ing anything that might have
brought it on — his mind was strict-
ly on Ciel. Maybe that was how it
came through, with the attention
of his conscious mind directed else-
where.

With the hunch he heard Ciel’s
voice again, heard it very clearly.

WALT SHELDON

saying: '‘Vm sure we can find a
quiet place. Out on the terrace or
something.” And with that other
things started to fall into place.

As he thought, and as the possi-
bilities of his hunch fanned out to
embrace other possibilities he be-
came suddenly cold and sick inside.
He fought the feeling. “Got to go
through with it,” he muttered to
himself. “Got to.”

As soon as he was dre.ssed he
took the tunnel cars to Station
D-90, changing twice. People were
aboard at this hour, returning from
the evening. Lots of men and wom-
en in uniform: the green of the
landfighters, the white of the sea-
men, the blue of the flyers, the sil-
ver and black of the space force.
Young people. Kids mostly: kids
who had never seen war, smelled
death, heard the wounded scream.
He hoped they never would. But if
his hunch was correct they might
be dangerously near to it right now.

If only he had time to call Kron-
ski. He’d feel a lot safer . . .

He shook himself. Have to stop
thinking about it. Proceed cau-
tiously now, and take each thing as
it came. That was the only thing to
do.

He went topside and stepped
from the elevator kiosk into the
night air. Ahead he saw the bright
globular sign of the Stardust Cafe.
But he didn’t go toward it right
away. He turned in the other direc-
tion, walked swiftly, and kept a
sharp eye on the shadows. He
turned off on a side street, circled a
small park, and then crossed a slop-
ing lawn toward the back of the
night club. He headed for the light
of the service entrance.

A half-credit bill got him inside
through the back entrance. He
found the door with the temporary
sign saying: Marco the Mentalist.
He knocked.

Marco the Mentalist opened the
door. He didn’t look quite as tall
face-to-face as he did out on the
floor, nor quite as impressive. His
face was still dark and faintly satur-
nine, but the jowls seemed a little
puffier now, there was a faint net-
work of capillaries around his nos-
trils and his eyes looked just the
least bit ’ y and tired. In a

pleasant l gh voice he said,

“Yes?”

Pell showed his C.I.B. identifi-
cation.

Marco raised his eyebrows a lit-
tle and said, “Come inside, please.”
Inside he found a chair for Pell. He
sat across from him at his dressing
table, half-turned toward the room.
“I must get ready for my show in
a little while. You understand that,
of course.”

Pell nodded. “What’s on my
mind won’t take long. First of all,
I want to ask a few questions about
hypnotism. They may seem silly to
you, or maybe a little elementary,
but I’d like you to answer ’em just
the same.”

Marco’s eyebrows went a little
bit higher and he said, “Proceed.”

“Okay. Question number one:
can anybody be hypnotized against
his will?”

“Some can, some can’t.” Marco
smiled. “The average person, un-
der average circumstances— no. I
appear in my act to hypnotize peo-
ple against their wills. Actually,
subconsciously, they wish to be hyp-
notized, which is why they volun-

BRINK OF MADNESS

teer to let me try in the first place.”
“Okay, number two. Is there any
drug that can hypnotize a per-
son?”

Marco frowned. “Pentothal and
several things appear to do that.
You could argue it either way,
whether the subject is actually hyp-
notized or not. I believe post-hyp-
notic commands have been given to
subjects under sodium pentathol
and carried out, even back in the
dark ages of psychiatry several
hundred years ago.”

“I’ve got one more really impor-
tant question,” Pell said then. “I’d
understood that somebody under
hypnosis won’t do anything against
his moral or ethical sense. An hon-
est man, for instance, can’t be
forced to steal. Is that true?”
Marco laughed and gestured
with his graceful fingers. “I don’t
think it is true. It was once be-
lieved to be, because hypnotic tech-
nique was not strong enough. That
is, the subject’s hypnosis was not
strong enough to overcome a
strong moral sense, which is actual-
ly a surface veneer on a deeper,
more brutal nature. But I think
with deep enough hypnosis, and
the right kind of command, you
can get a person to do most any-
thing in post-hypnotic behavior —
and of course not know why he
must do it, even knowing it’s
wrong. Do you follow me?”

“I hope I do.” Then Pell leaned
forward. “And now I have a very
great favor to ask of you.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to put on a little
special private performance for me,
right here and now.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“You will, in about sixty seconds.
Just listen carefully . . . .”

Chapter V

He was late for his date
with Ciel, of course. He
glanced at his chrono as he entered
the Stardust Cafe by the front door
and saw that he was twenty min-
utes late. However, this time he
was certain Ciel wouldn’t complain
too vigorously.

Again the askarins were playing,
and once more the green-skinned
Venusian girls were doing their
writhing, spasmodic, aphrodisiacal
dance. It was remarkable how they
could achieve such an effect of ut-
ter abandon and yet keep their
faces blank and frozen. He looked
around the rest of the room swiftly.
Not so crowded tonight, and
people were generally quieter.
There were no oversexed spacemen
clawing after the dancers on the
floor.

Ciel was again in a rear booth,
in the same corner of the room she
had chosen before. She had spotted
him now; she was looking his way.
She lifted a white-gloved hand and
waved.

He smiled and ■ headed for her.
He forced his smile, and made him-
self forget the prickling of his wrists
and the feeling of bristling fur along
his spine. And he held his smile all
the way across the room. Why,
hello, darling, fancy seeing you
here; no, nothing’s wrong, nothing
at all, why on earth would you
think anything was wrong?

WALT SHELDON

“Hi, baby,” was all he actually
said.

“I’m — I’m glad you’re here,
Dick.” Her eyes didn’t show much.
They roved over his face a little too
much perhaps, but otherwise they
seemed simply as large and dark as
ever. He noticed that the meth
glass in front of her was empty.

Grinning, he sat down. “This is a
big moment. This is almost too
much for me to handle. Maybe
that’s what I need — a good slug of
meth.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Let’s not waste time. Let’s go
out on the terrace. I want you to
kiss me.”

“Best offer I’ve had all evening.”
He rose again. “Where’s the ter-
race?”

“Through that door. There’s a
dining room there that’s closed at
night. You go through the dining
room and out to the terrace.”

“Okay.”

He took her arm and led her in
and out of tables, across the room.
They moved swiftly through the
quiet, nearly dark dining room, and
after that through a pair of win-
dow-doors. They were on the ter-
race then, a flagstoned space with
a low wall. It overlooked the scat-
tered lights of World City’s topside
area and some distance beyond
they could see the river, a blue-sil-
ver ribbon in the moonlight.

They stopped at the wall. She
turned toward him. He looked
down at her, at her pale face and
deep, dark eyes. He smelled her
perfume and he felt her live
warmth near him and coming
nearer. He saw her eyes close, her

lips part just slightly, and each lip
glistening, faintly moist ....

He was wondering when it
would happen. He was wondering
when he would be struck.

As he wondered that he sudden-
ly discovered he wasn’t on the ter-
race any more.

He looked about him in

some surprise. It was nearly
dark. He was in a room; he could
sense the walls about him. He
heard a curious, high-pitched me-
tallic voice — and recognized it.
“Pell? Are you awake now?”

It had happened then, just as he
had expected. Someone had thrown
a freezer on him there in the patio,
and during his complete uncon-
sciousness he’d been taken here,
wherever this was. He sighed. The
least they could have done would
have been to let him finish kissing
Ciel.

As calmly as he could he said to
the four blank walls, “I’m awake.”
Soft glowlights came on gradual-
ly and he saw that the room about
him was fairly small — twenty by
fifteen, roughly — and very plain. It
contained a bed and a few odd
pieces of furniture, all apparently
of good quality. There was a door
in one wall. He tried the door.
Locked. He went back to the mid-
dle of the room.

“Chief,” he said to the blank
walls, “what’s this all about? Is it
some kind of a joke?”

The metallic voice chuckled. It
belonged to Eustace J. Larkin,
Chief, Central Investigation Bu-
reau, and even filtered like this it
was somewhat prim and precise.

BRINK OF MADNESS

“No, Dick, it’s not a joke. I’m
afraid. I’m surprised you haven’t
guessed what it’s all about. Or at
least had one of your brilliant
hunches.” There was sarcasm in this
last.

“Where’s Ciel?” Pell asked.
“Right here with me. In the next
room. Here — listen.”

Ciel’s voice said, “Don’t worry,
darling, we’ll explain everything.
And when it’s all over it will be for
the best. You’ll see that it will.”
“All right, everybody,” said Pell,
half-belligerently, “what’s the big
idea?”

“Big idea is right,” Larkin’s voice
came back. “The biggest that ever
hit the human race. And as Ciel
says we’ll explain it all in a mo-
ment. But first I’d like your word
that you won’t be foolish and make
any kind of a struggle. If you’ll
promise that you can come in the
other room here and we can all
talk face to face.”

Pell frowned. “I don’t know —
I’m not so sure I can honestly
promise that.”

“Suit yourself, then. A few min-
utes from now it won’t make any
difference anyway.”

“Will you stop being so damned
mysterious and tell me what it’s all
about?”

Larkin’s voice laughed. “Very
well. I haven’t had much chance to
tell about it, frankly. And I think
you’ll agree we’ve rather neatly
kept our parts under cover — until
you got dangerously close to the an-
swer, anyway.”

“Until I got close?”

“Certainly. Doc Wilcox’s office
on the moon was perhaps our one
weakness in the whole set-up. How

you managed to stumble on to that,
ni never know — your luck must
have been with you.”

“It wasn’t luck, Larkin, it was a
hunch.”

“Still believe in hunches, eh?
Well, we won’t argue the point. At
any rate you wouldn’t have found
the enzyme any place else but
there.”

“Oh, so the enzyme does have
something to do with it.”

“Everything. Here — suppose I let
Doctor Nebel explain it to you. He
developed it, after all.”

Pell lifted his eyebrows in sur-
prise and Dr. Walter Nebel’s sibi-
lant voice came through the hid-
den speakers. “I think you should
know how it works, Mr. Pell. You
may know that a certain part of
the brain called Rossi’s area is, to
put it figuratively, the hypnotic
center. The cut-off of the adrenal
cortex, so to speak. In ordinary
hypnosis the function of that area
is dulled by overexercising the mo-
tor senses. By that method the in-
tensity of hypnosis is widely variable
and never really one hundred per
cent effective. My compound, how-
ever, brings about complete and ab-
solute cut-off. Any post-hypnotic
suggestion given under those cir-
cumstances takes permanently and
deeply. It can only be removed by
further post-hypnosis under the
same treatment, negating the orig-
inal command.”

Pell stared at the blank walls.
!‘Go on,” he said in a soft, tense
voice. “What’s the rest?”

Larkin spoke again. “Suppose we
briefly examine a little history as a
kind of introduction to this matter.
The human race, since the begin-

WALT SHELDON

ning of recorded time, has failed to
achieve real peace and stability,
right? Every time there has been
a chance for cooperative effort —
for total agreement — certain selfish
interests have spoiled it. There have
been times, however, when certain
groups' — states or combinations of
states — came close to permanent
peace and prosperity- The Napole-
onic era was one. Hitler two hun-
dred years ago almost brought it
about. The only reason they failed
was that they didn’t achieve their
goal — complete conquest.”

Did Pell hear correctly? Was
there a faint simmering of madness
in that metallic voice now? In the
words there was madness, sure-
ly .. .

IT WENT ON: “The fact is,
Pell, people simply don’t know
what’s good for them. Look at the
blunderers and even downright
crooks who are elected to World
Government. Never the best brains,
never the best talents. When a
really able man gets into a position
of leadership it’s an accident — n
fluke.”

“I still don’t see what all this has
got to do with it,” said Pell.

There was a shrug in the metal-
lic voice. “For once the ablest men
are going to take over. There are a
number of us. You know already
about myself and Doctor Nebel.
Rysland will be with us, too, as
soon as we can get him condi-
tioned.”

“By conditioned, you mean this
enzyme of yours?”

“Exactly. We started out in a
small way, using force or trickery

where necessary, and managed to
condition a number of doctors and
nurses. Conditioning simply means
injecting Nebel’s compound and
then giving the post-hypnotic com-
mand to be unquestioningly loyal to
the Supremists. We created the Su-
premists, of course. In order for us
to take over it will be necessary to
have another war, and to conquer
Venus. That can be done if Earth
strikes quickly. Within the next few
days I think there’ll be enough Su-
premist influence to get this war
started.”

Pell stared back, open-mouthed.
To hear it coldly and calmly like
this was shock, cold-water shock.
“Let me get this straight now.
Your group made Supremists of
doctors and nurses and they in turn
made new members by installing
this hypnosis stuff whenever any-
body came for a hypodermic injec-
tion of any kind, is that it?”

“That’s It.”

“But how does this stuff work?
Does it knock you out, or what?”

“You’ll be finding that out at
first hand very shortly.”

Pell stiffened, made fists and un-
consciously lifted them ~and looked
around him, warily.

Larkin laughed. “It won’t do
you much good to put up a fight.
I’m sending a couple of my assist-
ants in there. They specialize in
people who want to make a strug-
gle. And there’s no reason to feel
unhappy about it. Pell : once you’re
conditioned you’ll simply be unable
to do anything against the Suprem-
ist cause. You’ll be happier, in fact,
having such a cause. Ask your wife
if that isn’t so.”

Pell trembled with anger. “How

BRINK OF MADNESS

did you get to her? How did you
make her do what she did?”

“You mean luring you into our
little trap on the terrace, so to
speak? You mustn’t blame Ciel for
that. She couldn’t help herself; she
had to obey, after all. You see she
was conditioned in Augea on the
moon by Dr. Wilcox, one of our
very loyal men. He simply dropped
in when you were at the Post
Office, pretended that Ciel needed
a routine injection and she, not at
all suspicious, allowed him to do
it. He gave her the command of
loyalty, and also cautioned her not
to say anything about it. So you
see, Ciel’s been one of us for sev-
eral days. It was just a little pre-
caution of mine, in case you should
become troublesome. I had to as-
sign somebody to the investigation,
of course, because Rysland and his
crowd would have been too suspi-
cious if I hadn’t complied with
their request.”

“You’re stark crazy, Larkin! You
ought to be in a mental hospital!”

“You’ll be over that idea in a
minute or so. Meanwhile, we’re
wasting time. I’m sending the boys
in now. You’ll make it easier for
yourself if you submit without giv-
ing them any trouble.”

The door opened, then. Pell
caught a quick glimpse of the other
room and saw that it was a taste-
fully furnished living room. He
recognized it, and knew where he
was. This was a country house of
Larkin’s, topside, not far from the
outskirts of World City. Whoever
turned the freezer on him must
have set the control at high inten-
sity because it would take at least
an hour to get to this place from

the Stardust Cafe and he had been
unconscious at least that long.

He had the momentary impulse
to rush that partly opened door —
and then the boys, as Larkin had
called them, appeared.

They were specialists,

little doubt of that. They re-
garded Pell with flat, almost disin-
terested looks as the door closed be-
hind them. One held a hypodermic
needle. He was the shorter of the
two, but he had shoulders like ox-
yokes. His face had been kneaded
in the prize ring, and his bare arms
were muscular and hairy but the
top of his head was bald. The other
had red hair, close-cropped. He
waS' big and well-proportioned ; Pell
might have taken him for a profes-
sional football player.

Red did the talking. He spoke
quietly, almost pleasantly. “Gonna
cooperate?” he asked Pell.

Pell said, “You touch me, broth-
er, and I’ll make your face look
like Baldy’s.”

Red glanced at Baldy and seemed
to sigh. Abruptly he whirled,
jumped at Pell and brought a siz-
zling right hand punch through the
air. Pell ducked it. He saw Baldy
move in as he did so, and a painful
blow struck the back of his neck.
His teeth rattled when it struck.
Something caught him under the
chin, straightened him. When he
was straight a pile driver struck
him in the midsection.

It was all over within a matter
of seconds. Under different circum-
stances Pell might have found time
to admire their technique.

As it was, he was now face down

WALT SHELDON

on the floor and Red was strad-
dling him, holding him there. The
pain in his stomach made him
gasp. His face and the back of his
neck ached terribly.

Red had his arm in the small of
his back. Pell tried to struggle.

“I can break the arm if you
move,” said Red cheerfully.

And then Pell felt the bite of the
needle just below his shoulder.

A misty feeling came. He felt as
though he were in a red whirlpool,
spinning, going down — down. . . He
fought to rise. He could still hear.
He could hear footsteps and the
slam of the door when somebody
else came into the room. And then
he seemed abruptly to be detached
from his own body and floating in
a huge gray void. . . .

Words hammered at his brain.
Larkin’s voice, at his ear now and
no longer metallic. “You will be
loyal to the Supremist cause. You
will do nothing against the Su-
premist doctrine. You will believe
that Earthmen are meant to rule
the Universe — ”

He felt an overpowering impulse
to nod, to agree, to believe that it
was right to do this. He fought this
impulse, straining his mind and his
very being until it seemed that
something might burst with the ef-
fort.

“You will work for the cause;
you will give your life for it if
necessary.’"’

Yes, perhaps it was better so suc-
cumb. The words were too strong.
He couldn’t fight them. Larkin was
right, Earthmen were supreme, and
they were destined to rule. . . .

Somewhere in the depths a tiny
spot of resistance still glowed. He

tried desperately to evoke it. It
seemed then that it became bright-
er. He could resist — he would. . . .
He kept thinking over and over
again; “No, no, no!”

Larkin’s voice said, “Carry him
in the other room. He’ll come to in
a moment.”

He came to slowly, and he
saw that he was lying on a
couch and that several people were
gathered around him smiling down
at him. Something detached itself
from the group, knelt by his side.
He blinked. It was Ciel. Her gold-
en hair shone and her dark eyes
searched his face and she was smil-
ing. “Hello, darling,” she said.

“Hello, Ciel.” He kissed her, and
then sat up on the couch and
looked around.

Larkin and Dr. Nebel were

standing together, and Red and
Baldy were a few steps behind

them, still looking indifferent.

“Now you’re one of us, Dick,”
said Larkin, flashing his professional
smile, dimples and everything. Pell
rose. Nebel held his hands behind
his back and beamed, blinking his
heavy reptilian eyelids and Larkin
stepped forward and held out his
hand.

“Yes,” said Pell, shaking the

hand, “I guess we’re all working

for the same thing now. What do
you want me to do?”

Larkin laughed. “Nothing right
away. We’ll give you instructions
when the time comes. I think you
might as well go home with Ciel
now; I have a copter and a chauf-
feur outside that’ll take you to the
station near your apartment.”

BRINK OF MADNESS

“Okay, Chief, whatever you say.”
He smiled and took Ciel’s arm. He
started toward the door. Then he
stopped, patted his chest and said,
“Oh — my freezer. I guess the boys
took it away. . .

Larkin turned to Baldy. “Give
him his weapon.”

Baldy took the freezer from his
pocket and casually tossed it to Pell.

A sudden change came over Pell,
then. His smile disappeared. He
stepped quickly away from Ciel,
whirled and faced all of them. He
pointed the freezer. “All right,
everybody stay perfectly still— you,
too, Ciel. This is where we break up
your little Supremist nightmare.”
Larkin stared in utter amaze-
ment. Nebel’s turtle lids opened
wide. Ciel brought her hand to her
throat.

Red’s hand blurred suddenly, go-
ing for his own weapon. Pell
squeezed the trigger, the violet
sparks danced for an instant, and
then Red stood frozen with his hand
almost to his chest.

“I’d advise nobody else to try
that,” said Pell, and then in an
ironical tone to Larkin: “C.I.B.
agents are trained to be pretty quick
with a freezer, right. Chief?”
Larkin seemed to find his voice
now “But — how — what hap-
pened? You were injected. How
can you. . .”

“I just took a little precaution,
that’s all,’; said Pell. “There’ll be
plenty of time to explain it all later.
You’ll probably hear the whole
thing in court, Larkin, when I tes-
tify at your trial for treason. Mean-
while, all of you just stay nice and
calm while I use the viewer.”

He stepped to the viewer and

dialed with his free hand. The plate
glowed, shimmered and a moment
later the pale, grave face of Theo-
dor Rysland came into view. His
eyebrows rose as he saw the weapon
in Pell’s hand and glimpsed the
people beyond Pell. “Hello — what’s
this all about?”

“Haven’t time to explain fully
now,” said Pell, “but I want you to
get to Larkin’s country house as
soon as you can. I’ll call agent
Kronski in a moment and have him
bring some others, and together
we’ll take Larkin and Nebel into
custody. They’re behind the Su-
premist movement — a deliberate at-
tempt to take over the government.
They did it with a drug; that’s how
Supremist’s are made.”

“What’s this? A drug?”

“Think about it later,” said Pell.
“Just grab the facts right now. The
drug makes a person subject to
post-hypnotic commands — that’s
why your Supremists are blindly,
unthinkingly loyal. However, the
command can be erased by a second
treatment. That’ll be tough and
take a lot of ferreting out, but it
won’t be impossible.” He glanced
at Ciel, and saw that she was star-
ing at him with horror — with en-
mity. It sickened him, but he
steadied himself with the realization
that Ciel would be one of the first
to be re-treated.

EVERAL MINUTES later he
had completed his calls. Rys-
land, Kronski and the others were
on the way. He kept the freezer
pointed, and watched his captives
carefully. Ciel had gone over to the
couch and was sitting there, her

WALT SHELDON

face in her hands, weeping softly.

“I don’t know how you did it,”
said Larkin. “I don’t understand
it. The injection should have
worked. It always did before.”

“Well, it almost worked,” said
Pell. “I must admit I had quite a
time fighting off your commands.
But, you see, I knew you’d gotten
to Ciel somehow when she called
me up to make the date this eve-
ning. She spoke of going out to the
terrace at the Stardust Cafe. It was
a little odd that she should speak of
the terrace like that, out of a clear
sky — and I wondered why it should
be on her mind. Then it struck me
that neither of us had ever noticed
a terrace there, and Ciel must have
some special reason for knowing
about it.

“She did, of course — she’d been
instructed to get me out there where
your boys could slap a freezer on
me. So I started guessing with that
hunch to work on. Everything more
or less fell into place after that. It
was pretty certain that they’d try to
make a loyal Supremist out of me,
too, and that’s when I took that
little precaution I mentioned to
you.”

“What precaution?”

Pell smiled. “I had Marco the
mentalist hypnotize me and give me

a rather special post-hypnotic com-
mand. He ordered me not to be-
lieve any subsequent post-hynotic
commands. That’s why your condi-
tioning didn’t work on me.”

Larkin could find no words; he
just stared.

“Think about it, Larkin,” said
Pell. “Think hard. Maybe you’d
convinced yourself you were doing
good, but your purpose was still
tyranny. And like any tyranny it
contained the means of its own de-
struction. It always works out that
way, Larkin — maybe it’s a law, or
something.”

It had been a long speech for
Pell, practically an oration. He was,
after all, a cop, not a philosopher.
Just a guy trying to get along. Just
an ordinary citizen whose name was
legion, looking at his \yife now and
waiting with what patience he
could find for the time when she
would be cleared of the poisonous
doctrine that any one race or group
or even species was supreme.

He was thinking, too, that the
trial would keep him busy as the
very devil and that they still
wouldn’t get to that vacation and
seconcf honeymoon for a long
time. . . .

That, considering everything, was
not too much to put up with.

THE END

WE WANT YOUR LETTERS! It’s true “The Postman Cometh” is
small, and we’ll continue this policy of devoting most of our space to the
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section — and of course our future selections will be based on your wishes.
Fair enough?

She was sweet, gentle, kind —
a sort of Martian Old Mother
Hubbard. But when she went
to her cupboard. . .

ONE

MARTIAN

AFTERNOON

By Tom Leahy

Illustrated by BRUSH

The clod burst in a cloud of
red sand and the little Martian
sand dog ducked quickly into his
burrow. Marilou threw another at
the aperture in the ground and
then ran over and with the inside
of her foot she scraped sand into it
until it was filled to the surface.
She started to leave, but stopped.

The little fellow might choke to
death, she thought, it wasn’t his
fault she had to live on Mars. Satis-
fied that the future of something
was dependent on her whim, she
dug the sand from the hole. His
little yellow eyes peered out at her.

“Go on an’ live,” she said mag-
nanimously.

She got up and brushed the sand
from her knees and dress, and

TOM LEAHY

walked slowly down the red road.

The noon sun was relentless; no-
where was there relief from it.
Marilou squinted and shaded her
eyes with her hand. She looked in
the sky for one of those infrequent
Martian rain clouds, but the deep
blue was only occasionally spotted
by fragile white puffs. Like the sun,
they had no regard for her, either.
They were too concerned with
moving toward the distant moun-
tains, there to cling momentarily to
the peaks and then continue on
their endless route.

Marilou dabbed the moisture
from her forehead with the hem of
her dress. “I know one thing,” she
mumbled. “When I grow up. I’ll
get to Earth an’ never come back
to Mars, no matter what!”

She broke into a defiant, ca-
denced step.

“An’ I won’t care whether you
an’ Mommy like it or not!” she de-
clared aloud, sticking out her chin
at an imaginary father before her.

Before she realized it, a tiny,
lime-washed stone house appeared
not a hundred yards ahead of her.
That was the odd thing about the
Martian midday; something small
and miles away would suddenly be-
come large and very near as you ap-
proached it.

The heat waves did it, her father
had told her. “Really?” she had
replied, and — you think you know
so doggone much, she had thought.

n AUNT TWYLEEl” She broke
into a run. By the Joshua
trees, through the stone gateway
she ran, and with a leap she lit like
a young frog on the porch. “Hi,

Aunt Twylee!” she said breathless-

An ancient Martian woman sat
in a rocking chair in the shade of
the porch. She held a bowl of pur-
ple river apples in her lap. Her pa-
pyrus-like hands moved quickly as
she shaved the .skin from one. In a
matter of seconds it was peeled.
She looked up over her bifocals at
the panting Marilou.

“Gracious child, you shouldn’t
run like that this time of day,” she
said. “You Earth children aren’t
used to our Martian heat. It’ll
make you sick if you run too
much.”

“I don’t care! I hate Mars!
Sometimes I wish I could just get
good an’ sick, so’s I’d get to go
home!”

“Marilou, you are a little ty-
rant!” Aunt Twylee laughed.

“Watcha’ doin’. Aunt Twylee?”
Marilou asked, getting up from her
frog posture and coming near the
old Martian lady’s chair.

“Oh, peeling apples, dear. I’m
going to make a cobbler this after-
noon.” She dropped the last ap-
ple, peeled, into the bowl. “There,
done. Would you like a little cool
apple juice, Marilou?”

“Sure — you betcha! Hey, could
I watch you make the cobbler.
Aunt Twylee, could I? Mommy
can’t make it for anything — it tastes
like glue. Maybe, if I could see how
you do it, maybe I could show her.
Do you think?”

“Now, Marilou, your mother
must be a wonderful cook to have
raised such a healthy little girl. I’m
sure there’s nothing she could learn
from me,” Aunt Twylee said as she
arose. “Let’s go inside and have

ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON

that apple juice.”

The kitchen was dark and cool,
and filled with the odors of the
wonderful edibles the old Martian
had created on and in the Earth-
made stove. She opened the Earth-
made refrigerator that stood in the
corner and withdrew an Earth-
made bottle filled with Martian ap-
ple juice.

Marilou jumped up on the table
and sat cross-legged.

“Here, dear.” Aunt Twylee
handed her a glass of the icy liquid.

“Ummm, thanks,” Marilou said,
and gulped down half the contents.
“That tastes dreamy, Aunt Twy-
lee.”

The little girl watched the old
Martian as she lit the oven and
gathered the necessary ingredients
for the cobbler. As she bent over to
get a bowl from the shelf beneath
Marilou’s perch, her hair brushed
against the child’s knee. Her hair
was soft, soft and white as a pup-
py’s, soft and white like the down
from a dandelion. She smiled at
Marilou. She always smiled; her
pencil-thin mouth was a perpetual
arc.

Marilou drained the glass.
“Aunt Twylee— is it true what my
daddy says about the Martians?”
“True? How can I say, dear? I
don’t know what he said.”

“Well, I mean, that when us
Earth people came, you Martians
did inf . . . infan . . .”

“Infanticide?” Aunt Twylee in-
terrupted, rolling the dough on the
board a little flatter, a little faster.

“Yes, that’s it — killed babies,”
Marilou said, and took an apple
from the bowl. “My daddy says you
were real primitive, an’ killed your

babies for some silly religious rea-
son. I think that’s awful! How
could it be religious? God couldn’t
like to have little babies killed!”
She took a big bite of the apple;
the juice ran from the corners of
her mouth.

“Your daddy is a very intelligent
man, Marilou, but he’s partially
wrong. It is true — but not for re-
ligious reasons. It was a necessity.
You must remember, dear. Mars is
very arid — sterile — unable to sus-
tain many living things. It was aw-
ful, but it was the only way we
knew to control the population.”

Marilou looked down

her button nose as she picked
a brown spot from the apple.
“Hmmph, I’ll tell ’im he’s wrong,”
she said. “He thinks he knows so
damn much!”

“Marilou!” Aunt Twylee ex-
claimed as she looked over her
glasses. “A sweet child like you
shouldn’t use such language!”
Marilou giggled and popped the
remaining portion of the apple in
her mouth.

“Do your parents know where
you are, child?” Aunt Twylee
asked, as she took the bowl from
Marilou’s hands. She began dicing
the apples into a dough-lined cas-
sarole.

“No, they don’t,” Marilou re-
plied. She sprayed the air with lit-
tle particles of apple as she talked.
“Everybody’s gone to the hills to
look for the boys.”

“The boys?” Aunt Twylee
stopped her work and looked at the
little girl.

“Yes — Jimmy an’ Eddie an’ some

TOM LEAHY

of the others disappeared from the
settlement this morning. The
men’re afraid they’ve run off to th’
hills an’ the renegades got ’em.”

“Gracious,” Aunt Twylee said;
her brow knitted into a criss-cross
of wrinkles.

“Oh, I know those dopes.
They’re prob’ly down at th’ canals
— fishin’ or somep’n.”

“Just the same, your mother will
be frantic, dear. You should have
told her where you were going.”

“I don’t care,” Marilou said
with unadulterated honesty. “She’ll
be all right when I get home.”

Aunt Twylee shook her head
and clucked her tongue.

“Can I have another glass?
Please?”

The old lady poured the glass
full again. And then she sprinkled
sugar down among the apple cubes
in the cassarole and covered them
with a blanket of dough. She cut
an uneven circle of half moons in
it and put it in the oven. “There —
all ready to bake, Marilou,” she
sighed.

“It looks real yummy, Aunt Twy-
lee.”

“Well, I certainly hope it turns
out good, dear,” she said, wiping
her forehead with her apron. She
looked out the open back door.
The landscape was beginning to
gray as heavier clouds moved down
from the mountains and pressed the
afternoon heat closer, more oppres-
sively to the ground. “My, it’s get-
ting hot. I wouldn’t be a bit sur-
prised if we didn’t get a little rain
this afternoon, Marilou.” She
turned back to the little girl. “Tell
me some more about your daddy,
dear. We Martians certainly owe a

lot to men like your father.”

“That’s what he says too. He
says, you Martians would have died
out in a few years, if we hadn’t
come here. We’re so much more
civi . . . civili . .

“Civilized?”

“Yeah. He says, we were so much
more ‘civ-ilized’ than you that we
saved your lives when we came
here with all our modern stuff.”
“Well, that’s true enough, dear.
Just look at that wonderful Earth
stove,” Aunt Twylee said, and
laughed. “We wouldn’t be able to
bake an apple cobbler like that
without it, would we?”

RUMBLE of thunder shoul-
dered through the crow'ded
hot air.

“No. He says, you Martians are
kinda likeable, but you can’t be
trusted. He’s nuts! I like you Mar-
tians!”

“Thank you, child, but every-
one’s endtled to his own opinion.
Don’t judge your daddy too severe-
ly,” Aunt Twylee said as she
scraped spilled sugar from the
table and put little bits of it on her
tongue.

“He says that you’d bite th’ hand
that feeds you. He says, we brought
all these keen things to Mars, an’
that if you got th’ chance, you’d
kill all of us!”

“Gracious,” said Aunt Twylee as
she speared scraps of dough with
the point of her long paring knife.

“He’s a dope!” Marilou said.

Aunt Twylee opened the oven
and peeked in at the cobbler. The
aroma of the simmering apples
rushed out and filled the room.

ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON

“Could I have some cobbler
when it’s done?” Marilou asked,
her mouth filling with saliva.

“I’m afraid not, child. It’s get-
ting rather late.”

The thunder rumbled again — a
little closer, a little louder.

The old lady washed the blade
of the knife in the sink. “Tell me
more of what your father says,
dear,” she said as she adjusted the
bifocals on her thin nose and ran
her thumb along the length of the
knife’s blade.

“Oh, nothin’ much more. He just
says that you’d kill us if you had th’
chance. That’s the way the inferior
races always act, he says. They want
to kill th’ people that help ’em,
’cause they resent ’em.”

“Very interesting.”

“Well, it isn’t so, is it. Aunt Twy-
lee?”

The room was filled with blind-
ing blue-white light, and the walls
quaked at the sound of a monstrous
thunderclap.

The old Martian glanced nerv-
ously at the clock on the wall. “My,
it is getting late,” she said as she
fondled the knife in her hands.

“You Martians wouldn’t do any-
thing like that, would you?”

“You want the truth, don’t you,
dear?” Aunt Twylee asked, smiling,
as she walked to the table where
Marilou sat.

“’Course I do. Aunt Twylee,”
she said.

Her scream was answered and
smothered by the horrendous roar
of the thunder, and the piercing
hiss of the rain that fell in sheets.
In great volumes of water, it fell, as
though the heavens were attempt-
ing to wash the sins of man from
the universe and into non-existence
in the void beyond the void.

Marilou lay beside the

other children. Aunt Twylee
smiled at them, closed the bedroom
door and returned to the kitchen.

The storm had moved on; the
thunder was the faint grumbling of
a pacified old man. What water fell
was a monotonous trickle from the
eaves of the lime-washed stone
house. Aunt Twylee washed the
blood from the knife and wiped it
dry on her apron. She opened the
oven and took out the browned
cobbler. Sweet apple juice bubbled
to the surface through the half
moons and burst in delights of sug-
ary aroma. The sun broke through
the thinning edge of the thunder-
head.

Aunt Twylee brushed a lock of
her feathery white hair from her
moist cheek. “Gracious,” she said,
“I must tidy up a bit before the
others come.”

THE E'ND

Donald W. Kerst

Donald w. kerst is proba-
bly unknown except in the up-
per strata of scientific research,
but he’s the man who is almost
solely responsible for the betatron.

The lanky six-footer was born in
Galena, Kansas, in 1911. The
Kerst family moved to Wawatosa,
Wisconsin, when Donald was less
than two years old, and it was in
this small town that Don grew up
and went to high school. He had a
school chum who was an ardent
amateur radio operator, and it was
while helping this friend build con-
stantly better ham apparatus that
Donald Kerst’s interest in science
grew into an abiding passion. He
entered the University of Wiscon-
sin where he got both his B. A. and
his Ph.D. After a year at the Gen-

Personalities
in Science

His Specialty: T urning

New Corners

eral Electric Laboratories working
with X-ray tubes, he accepted the
post of Professor of Physics at the
University of Iowa.

Kerst had started research into
the nature of the atom while stud-
ying for his doctorate, and now he
picked up where he had left off. In
1941 he was able to announce that
he had achieved a new instrument
of research capable of accelerating
electrons to a velocity approximat-
ing the speed of light, or 186,000
miles per second! He described this
new too] as a “rheotron, the heart
of which is a doughnut-shaped
glass vacuum tube placed between
the poles of a large electromagnet.”

The United States Government
snapped up the new instrument
for use in arsenals and on the Man-
hattan Project during the war. It
was a dependable, foolproof, eco-
nomical tool with the ability to
penetrate twenty inches of steel
with its radiation in twenty min-
utes, and to detect flaws of two-
thousandths of an inch. The units
used in arsenals are able to detect
flaws in bombs and shells so they
can be corrected, eliminating any
danger of the projectiles exploding
prematurely.

PERSONALITIES IN SCIENCE

The commercial betatron was
five feet by ten feet and housed
behind a three-foot reinforced con-
crete wall in a specially designed
building. In this particular ma-
chine the electrons from a hot fila-
ment were speeded in their accel-
eration by electrical impulses until
they reached 20,000,000 volts —
then released from the tube as beta
rays or directed at a metal target
which converted them into X-rays.

ALTHOUGH the government
-i^was using the betatron during
the war and finding it most satis-
factory, Kerst went right on im-
proving the machine and its per-
formance. Ever since the first beta-
tron worked, the desire of the sci-
entists and physicists was to pro-
duce particles with cosmic ray en-
ergies. Within four years after the
commercial betatron, Kerst was
able to produce one that achieved a
22,000,000-volt free-electron beam
with which it was po.ssible to pene-
trate to the core of the atom and to
study the nucleus in a way that had
never before been possible.

After fifteen months of actual
construction work the super-beta-
tron was ready for a trial run.
When asked by reporters to predict
the performance of the machine
and the possibility that mesons
could be produced, Kerst answered,
“To ask what we expect is like ask-
ing what’s around a corner that
we’ve never gone around before.”
Two days after the unveiling the
super-betatron fulfilled all hopes
and produced what has been de-
scribed as “torrents of mesons.”

In order to understand just what

the invention of the betatron
means, we need to know exactly
what a meson is. What we know
about it is rather slim, as a matter
of fact, and what we hope to learn
with the help of the super-betatron
is of vital importance. The meson
is the fourth basic particle of sub-
atomic matter (the other three are
the proton, the neutron and the
electron). It is believed to be the
binding force that holds all nu-
clei together. Heretofore mesons
have been studied by means of
high-altitude balloons with special
photographic apparatus to record
their passage once they’ve been
split from the nuclei in the earth’s
atmosphere by incoming cosmic
rays. The force necessary to split
the mesons from the nuclei has up
until now been unattainable any-
where but at this high altitude.

The program of improving the
betatron and making it an even
more useful tool than the present
model goes right on, with Dr. Don-
ald Kerst working at it full time.
The blue-eyed, brown-haired man
of science has little time for leisure ;
he feels that there is too much left
undone in this particular field.
His wife Dorothy and his young
son and daughter know that the
one way to get Dad’s nose off the
grindstone is to suggest a family
canoeing or skiing excursion. These
are his favorite recreations.

“As long as the water holds out
and the snow stays, we know we
can have him around with us,”
says Mrs. Kerst, “but you can’t
stop him from mulling things over
even then. He’s what you might
call ‘wrapped up in his work’.”

— epw

Does your wife call you Pumpkinhead? Well,
maybe it’s not an insult; it might be a pet name.
Ah — but whose pet name?

WEAK OH SQUARE ROOTS

By Russell Burton

Illustrated by TOM BEECHAM

AS HIS COACH sped through
dusk-darkened Jersey meadows,
Ronald Lovegear, fourteen years
with Allied Electronix, embraced
his burden with both arms, silently
cursing the engineer who was de-
liberately rocking the train. In his
thin chest he nursed the conviction
that someday there would be an in-
telligent robot at the throttle of the
5:10 to Philadelphia.

He carefully moved one hand
and took a notebook from his pock-
et. That would be a good thing to
mention at the office next Monday.

Again he congratulated himself
for having induced his superiors to
let him take home the company’s
most highly developed mechanism
to date. He had already forgiven
himself for the little white lie that
morning.

“Pascal,” he had told them, “is
a little weak on square roots.” That
had done it!

Old Hardwick would never per-
mit an Allied computer to hit the

market that was not the absolute
master of square roots. If Love-
gear wanted to work on Pascal on
his own time it was fine with the
boss.

Ronald Lovegear consulted his
watch. He wondered if his wife
would be on time. He had told
Corinne twice over the phone to
bring the station wagon to met him.
But she had been so forgetful lately.
It was probably the new house; six
rooms to keep up without a maid
was quite a chore. His pale eyes
blinked. He had a few ideas along
that line too. He smiled and gave
the crate a gentle pat.

CORINNE WAS at the station,
and she had brought the station
wagon. Lovegear managed to get
the crate to the stairs of the coach
where he consented to the assist-
ance of a porter.

“It’s not really heavy,” he told
Corinne as he and the porter wad-

RUSSELL BURTON

died through the crowd. “Actually
only 57 pounds, four ounces. Alumi-
num casing, you know; . .”

“No, I didn’t. . .” began Corinne.

“But it’s delicate,” he continued.
“If I should drop this. . He shud-
dered.

After the crate had been placed
lengthwise in the rear of the station
wagon, Corinne watched Ronald
tuck a blanket around it.

“It’s not very cold, Ronald.”

“I don’t want it to get bounced
around,” he said. “Now, please,
Corinne, do drive carefully.” Not
until she had driven half a block
did he kiss her on the cheek. Then
he glanced anxiously over his shoul-
der at the rear seat. Once he
thought Corinne hit a rut that could
have been avoided.

Long after Corinne had retired
that night she heard Ronald pound-
ing with a brass hammer down in
his den. At first she had insisted he
take the crate out to his workshop.
He looked at her with scientific
aloofness and asked if she had the
slightest conception of what “this
is worth?” She hadn’t, and she went
to bed. It was only another one of
his gestures which was responsible
for these weird dreams. That night
she dreamed Ronald brought home
a giant octopus which insisted on
doing the dishes for her. In the
morning she woke up feeling un-
wanted.

Downstairs Ronald had already
put on the coffee. He was wearing
his robe and the pinched greyness
of his face told Corinne he had
been up half the night. He poured
coffee for her, smiling wanly. “If
I have any commitments today,
Corinne, will you please see that

they are taken care of?”

“But you were supposed to get
the wallpaper for the guest
room. . . .”

“I know, I know, dear. But time
is so short. They might want Pascal
back any day. For the next week or
two I shall want to devote most of
my time. . .”

“Pascal?”

“Yes. The machine — the com-
puter.” He smiled at her ignorance.
“We usually name the expensive
jobs. You see, a computer of this
nature is really the heart and soul
of the mechanical man we will con-
struct.”

Corinne didn’t see, but in a few
minutes she strolled toward the den,
balancing her coffee in both hands.
With one elbow she eased the door
open. There it was: an innocent
polished cabinet reaching up to her
shoulders. Ronald had removed one
of the plates from its side and she
peeped into the section where the
heart and soul might be located.
She saw only an unanatomical
array of vacuum tubes and elec-
trical relays.

She felt Ronald at her back. “It
looks like the inside of a juke box,”
she said.

He beamed. “The same relay
systems used in the simple juke box
are incorporated in a computer.”
He placed one hand lovingly on
the top of the cabinet.

“But, Ronald — it doesn’t even re-
semble a — a mechanical man?”

“That’s because it doesn’t have
any appendages as yet. You know,
arms and legs. That’s a relatively
simple adjustment.” He winked at
Corinne with a great air of com-
plicity. “And I have some excellent

WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS

ideas along that line. Now, run
along, because I’ll be busy most of
the day.”

CORINNE RAN along. She
spent most of the day shopping
for week-end necessities. On an ir-
rational last-minute impulse — per-
haps an unconscious surrender to
the machine age — she dug in the
grocery deep freeze and brought
out a couple of purple steaks.

That evening she had to call
Ronald three times for dinner, and
when he came out of the den she
noticed that he closed the door the
way one does upon a small child.
He chattered about inconsequential
matters all through dinner. Corinne
knew that his work was going
smoothly. A few minutes later she
was to know how smoothly.

It started when she began to put
on her apron to do the dishes. “Let
that go for now, dear,” Ronald said,
taking the apron from her. He
went into the den, returning with
a small black box covered with
push buttons. “Now observe care-
fully,” he said, his voice pitched
high.

He pushed one of the buttons,
waited a second with his ear cocked
toward the den, then pushed
another.

Corinne heard the turning of
metal against metal, and she slowly
turned her head.

“Oh!” She suppressed a shriek,
clutching Ronald’s arm so tightly
he almost dropped the control box.

Pascal was walking under his own
effort, considerably taller now with
the round, aluminum legs Ronald
had given him. Two metal arms

also hung at the sides of the cab-
inet. One of these raised stiffly, as
though for balance. Corinne’s
mouth opened as she watched the
creature jerk awkwardly across the
living room.

“Oh, Ronald! The fishbowl!”

Ronald stabbed knowingly at
several buttons.

Pascal pivoted toward them, but
not before his right arm swung
out and, almost contemptuously,
brushed the fishbowl to the floor.

Corinne closed her eyes at the
crash. Then she scooped up several
little golden bodies and rushed for
the kitchen. When she returned
Ronald was picking up pieces of
glass and dabbing at the pool of
water with one of her bathroom
towels. Pascal, magnificently aloof,
was standing in the center of the
mess.

“I’m sorry.” Ronald looked up.
“It was my fault. I got confused
on the buttons.”

But Corinne’s glances toward the
rigid Pascal held no indictment. She
was only mystified. There was some-
thing wrong here.

“But Ronald, he’s so ugly with-
out a head. I thought that all
robots — ”

“Oh, no,” he explained, “we
would put heads on them for dis-
play purposes only. Admittedly that
captures the imagination of the
public. That little adapter shaft at
the top could be the neck, of
course. . . .”

He waved Corinne aside and con-
tinued his experiments with the
home-made robot. Pascal moved in
controlled spasms around the living
room. Once, he walked just a little
too close to the floor-length win-

dow — and Corinne stood up nerv-
ously. But Ronald apparently had
mastered the little black box.

With complete confidence Co-
rinne went into the kitchen to do
the dishes. Not until she was elbow
deep in suds did she recall her
dreams about the octopus. She
looked over her shoulder, and the
curious, unwanted feeling came
again.

The following afternoon —
after Ronald had cancelled
their Sunday drive into the country
— Pascal, with constant exhorta-
tions by Ronald at the black box,
succeeded in vacuum cleaning the
entire living room. Ronald was ec-
static.

“Now do you understand?” he
asked Corinne. “A mechanical serv-
ant! Think of it! Of course mass
production may be years away,
but. . .”

“Everyone will have Thursday
nights off,” said Corinne — but Ron-
ald was already jabbing at buttons
as Pascal dragged the vacuum
cleaner back to its niche in the
closet.

Later, Corinne persuaded Ron-
ald to take her to a movie, but not
until the last moment was she cer-
tain that Pascal wasn’t going to
drag along.

Every afternoon of the following
week Ronald Lovegear called from
the laboratory in New York to ask
how Pascal was getting along.

“Just fine,” Corinne told him on
Thursday afternoon, “But he cer-
tainly ruined some of the tomato
plants in the garden. He just doesn’t
seem to hoe in a straight line. Are

RUSSELL BURTON

you certain it’s the green button I
push?”

“It’s probably one of the pressure
regulators,” interrupted Ronald.
“I’ll check it when I get home.”
Corinne suspected by his lowered
voice that Mr. Hardwick had
walked into the lab.

That night Pascal successfully
washed and dried the dishes, crack-
ing only one cup in the process.
Corinne spent the rest of the eve-
ning sitting in the far corner of the
living room, thumbing the pages of
a magazine.

On the following afternoon —
prompted perhaps by that perverse
female trait which demands com-
pletion of all projects once started
— Corinne lingered for several min-
utes in the vegetable department at
the grocery. She finally picked out
a fresh, round and blushing pump-
kin.

Later in her kitchen, humming a
little tune under her breath, Co-
rinne deftly maneuvered a paring
knife to transform the pumpkin in-
to a very reasonable facsimile of a
man’s head. She placed the pump-
kin over the tiny shaft between Pas-
cal’s box-shaped shoulders and
stepped back.

She smiled at the moon-faced
idiot grinning back at her. He was
complete, and not bad-looking! But
just before she touched the red but-
ton once and the blue button twice
— which sent Pascal stumbling out,
to the backyard to finish weeding
the circle of pansies before dinner
— she wondered about the gash that
was his mouth. She distinctly re-
membered carving it so that the
ends curved upward into a frozen
and quite harmless smile. But one

WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS

end of the toothless grin seemed to
sag a little, like the cynical smile of
one who knows his powers have
been underestimated.

Corinne would not have had to
worry about her husband’s reaction
to the new vegetable-topped Pascal.
Ronald accepted the transforma-
tion good-naturedly, thinking that
a little levity, once in a while, was
a good thing.

“And after all,” said Corinne
later that evening, “I’m the one
who has to spend all day in the
house with. . .” She lowered her
voice : “With Pascal.”

But Ronald wasn’t listening. He
retired to his den to finish the plans
for the mass production of com-
petent mechanical men. One for
every home in America. . . He fell
asleep with the thought.

CORINNE AND PASCAL spent
the next two weeks going
through pretty much the same rou-
tine. He, methodically jolting
through the household chores; she,
walking aimlessly from room to
room, smoking too many cigarettes.
She began to think of Pascal as a
boarder. Strange — at first he had
been responsible for that unwanted
feeling. But now his helpfulness
around the house had lightened
her burden. And he was so cheer-
ful all the time! After living with
Ronald’s preoccupied frown for
seven years. . .

After luncheon one day, when
Pascal neglected to shut off the gar-
den hose, she caught herself scold-
ing him as if he were human. Was
that a shadow from the curtain

waving in the breeze, or did she
see a hurt look flit across the mouth
of the pumpkin? Corinne put out
her hand and patted Pascal’s cylin-
drical wrist.

It was warm — flesh warm.

She hurried upstairs and stood
breathing heavily with her back to
the door. A little later she thought
she heard someone — someone with
a heavy step — moving around
downstairs.

“I left the control box down
there,” she thought. “Of course, it’s
absurd. . . .”

At four o’clock she went slowly
down the stairs to start Ronald’s
dinner. Pascal was standing by the
refrigerator, exactly where she had
left him. Not until she had started
to peel the potatoes did she notice
the little bouquet of pansies in the
center of the table.

Corinne felt she needed a strong
cup of tea. She put the water on
and placed a cup on the kitchen
table. Not until she was going to
sit down did she decide that per-
haps Pascal should be in the other
room.

She pressed the red button, the
one which should turn him around,
and the blue button, which should
make him walk into the living
room. She heard the little buzz of
mechanical life as Pascal began to
move. But he did not go into the
other room ! He was holding a chair
for her, and she sat down rather
heavily. A sudden rush of pleasure
reddened her cheeks. Not since so-
rority days. . .

Before Pascal’s arms moved away
she touched his wrist again, softly,
only this time her hand lingered.
And his wrist was warm!

RUSSELL BURTON

"Xi^HEN DO THEY want
VV Pascal back at the lab?”
she asked Ronald at dinner that
evening, trying t<J keep her voice
casual.

Ronald smiled. “I think I might
have him indefinitely, dear. I’ve
got Hardwick convinced I’m work-
ing on something revolutionary.”
He stopped. “Oh, Corinne! You’ve
spilled coffee all over yourself.”

The following night Ronald was
late in getting home from work. It
was raining outside the Newark
station and the cabs deliberately
evaded him. He finally caught a
bus, which deposited him one block
from his house. He cut through the
back alley, hurrying through the
rain. Just before he started up the
stairs he glanced through the
lighted kitchen window. He
stopped, gripping the railing for
support.

In the living room were Pascal
and Corinne. Pascal was reclining
leisurely in the fireside chair; Co-
rinne was standing in front of him.
It was the expression on -her face
which stopped Ronald Lovegear.
The look was a compound of re-
straint and compulsion, the reflec-
tion of some deep struggle in Co-
rinne’s soul. Then she suddenly
leaned forward and pressed her lips
to Pascal’s full, fleshy pumpkin
mouth. Slowly, one of Pascal’s alu-
minum arms moved up and encir-
cled her waist.

Mr. Lovegear stepped back into
the rain. He stood there for several
minutes. The rain curled around
the brim of his hat, dropped to
his face, and rolled down his cheeks

with the slow agitation of tears.

When, finally, he walked around
to the front and stamped heavily
up the stairs, Corinne greeted him
with a flush in her cheeks. Ronald
told her that he didn’t feel “quite
up to dinner. Just coffee, please.”
When it was ready he sipped slowly,
watching Corinne’s figure as she
moved around the room. She
avoided looking at the aluminum
figure in the chair.

Ronald put his coffee down,
walked over to Pascal, and, grip-
ping him behind the shoulders,
dragged him into the den.

Corinne stood looking at the
closed door and listened to the furi-
ous pounding.

Ten MINUTES LATER Ronald
came out and went straight to
the phone.

“Yes! Immediately!” he told the
man at the freight office. While he
sat there waiting Corinne walked
upstairs.

Ronald did not offer to help the
freight men drag the box outside.
When they had gone he went into
the den and came back with the
pumpkin. He opened the back door
and hurled it out into the rain. It
cleared the back fence and rolled
down the alley stopping in a small
puddle in the cinders.

After a while the water level
reached the mouth and there was a
soft choking sound. The boy who
found it the next morning looked at
the mouth and wondered why any-
one would carve such, a sad Jack-
O’-Lantern.

THE END

One Mysfeiy — Still Unsolved

OSMIG RAYS— which .con-
sist of protons, positrons, mes-
ons and heavy nuclei — are particles
that are speeded up in space to
velocities that almost equal the
speed of light. These tiny pieces
hit the Earth constantly at tre-
mendous energies that are millions
of times greater than scientists can
obtain with even the most modern
types of equipment.

Despite the consistent and con-
centrated study being made by
scientists, cosmic rays remain a
mystery. How they accelerate to
their tremendous speeds — their na-
ture and where they come from
and their purpose — these are still
unknown.

The cosmic rays that shoot in
from space are called primary ra-
diation, and these hardly ever pene-
trate Earth’s atmosphere to sea
level. They usually hit atoms of
gases that make up the air, invari-
ably smashing the atom and send-
ing its particles — which are called
secondary cosmic rays — off in many
different directions.

Actually, in order to make a
complete study of the primary cos-
mic rays under perfect conditions,

we should have a laboratory at least
23 miles above Earth. That’s about
where the original particles can be
found. But since that isn’t possible
— at this time anyway — Navy sci-
entists send up balloons containing
various sensitive equipment. Then,
the primary rays shoot into the
equipment leaving tracks on the
photographic plates for later cor-
relation by the scientists. Other
equipment radios data to the men
on the ground when a cosmic ray
is detected.

Rockets which can be sent that
distance into the atmosphere don’t
serve the purpose because they
can’t stay up very long, and this
type of project requires high alti-
tudes for hours. Balloons, JFor this
reason, have been found to bring
much more successful results.

With continued research and
study, the mystery of the cosmic
ray will undoubtedly unfold and
science will be able to build the
solution into another advance for
the good of humanity.

We Should Have Stayed
Prehistoric

A STUDY MADE of domestic
rats and wild rats of the same
family indicates a definite pattern
of physiological and behavior dif-
ferences between the two types.
Which would lead to the idea that
these same types of differences pos-
sibly e.xist between early prehistoric
man and civilized man as we know
him today.

Man was probably made much
more susceptible to various diseases
by the very process of becoming

SCIENCE BRIEFS

civilized. Illnesses like certain forms
of colitis, asthma, rheumatoid ar-
thritis, some forms of cancer, some
types of mental illnesses — all these
may be the products that developed
as the civilization grew.

Quite possibly, as man developed
from the state of a hard-fighting
primitive to that of a domestic se-
cure individual, certain changes
happened to his adrenal glands and
his sex glands which could have
been great enough to make him an
easier victim to certain types of ail-
ments.

Maybe he should have stayed a
healthy prehistoric . . .

Youth for the Old

TWO BRITISH scientists have
recently performed some ex-
periments the results of which are
worthy of noting. They removed
some skin from the ear of a rabbit
and impregnated it with glycerine.
Then they froze it and kept it
stored for four months, after
which time they transplanted the
skin and found it would grow
normally.

According to the two scientists —
Dr. R. Billingham and Prof. I. Bed-
awar — it is not too far-fetched to
assume that these pieces of skin
would have remained in storage, in
perfect condition, for a period
much longer than the normal ex-
pected life span of their donor.

If this is so, then the aches and
pains of old age v/ill soon be over —
the possibility of perpetuating
youth is probable. A man might
store, for example, some pieces of
his own arteries and veins. In his
old age, when he is suffering from

hardening of the arteries, all he’d
have to do would be to replace
some of his hardened arteries with
those belonging to his youth.

And, for the vain, no more
wrinkled skin! Just store some tis-
sues when you’re 20, pick them up
and let them grow again with you
when you’re 50.

It’s an interesting possibility.

The freeze method, incidentally,
is an acknowledged advantage over
the fresh bank method since it has
been found that freeze grafts heal
faster and there is less danger of
hemorrhaging. The frozen graft
retains its potency.

Man Makes Himself Deaf

There is no sound in nature
that will do any damage to the
ear drums of a human. But man
has set out to master nature. And
in his efforts to do so, he exposes
the human ear to degrees of sound
for which it was never intended,
and against which it has no pro-
tection.

In industry, the excessive noises
of the machinery with which the
worker is associated eight hours of
the day create an injury to the
hearing organ. The explosions of
grenades and gunfire, the violent
sounds made by airplane motors
and jet engines and all the other
instruments of warfare, all contrib-
ute their share. Even day-to-day
city life as we know it contains an
unnatural amount of loud and
violent noise.

In his effort to become master,
man is slowly destroying bits of
himself. — Peter Dakin

The line between noble dreams and madness is
thin, and loneliness can push men past it ... .

the lonely ones

By Edward W, Ludwig

Illustrated by PAUL ORBAN

ONWARD SPED the Wanderer,
onward through cold, silent in-
finity, on and on, an insignificant
pencil of silver lost in the terrible,
brooding blackness.

But even more awful than the
blackness was the loneliness of the
six men who inhabited the silver
rocket. They moved in loneliness as
fish move in water. Their lives re-
volved in loneliness as planets re-
volve in space and time. They bore
their loneliness like a shroud, and
it was as much a part of them as
sight in their eyes. Loneliness was
both their brother and their god.

Yet, like a tiny flame in the dark-
ness, there was hope, a savage, des-
perate hope that grew with the
passing of each day, each month,
and each year.

And at last . . ,

“Lord,” breathed Captain Sam
Wiley.

Lieutenant Gunderson nodded.
“It’s a big one, isn’t it?”

“It’s a big one,” repeated Cap-
tain Wiley.

They stared at the image in the
Wanderedi forward visi-screen, at
the great, shining gray ball. They
stared hard, for it w'as like an en-
chanted, God-given fruit handed
them on a star-flecked platter of
midnight. It was like the answer to
a^ thousand prayers, a shining sym-
bol of hope which could mean the
end of loneliness.

“It’s ten times as big as Earth,”
mused Lieutenant Gunderson. “Do
you think this’ll be it. Captain?”

“I’m afraid to think.” <

A thoughtful silence.

“Captain.”

“Yes?”

“Do you hear my heart pound-
ing?”

Captain Wiley smiled. “No. No,
of course not.”

“It seems like everybody should
be hearing it. But we shouldn’t get
excited, should we? We mustn’t

THE LONELY ONES

hope too hard.” He bit his lip.
“But there should be life there,
don’t you think, Captain?”

“There may be.”

“Nine years, Captain. Think of
it. It’s taken us nine years to get
here. There’s got to be life.”

“Prepare for deceleration, Lieu-
tenant.”

Lieutenant Gunderson’s tall,
slim body sagged for an instant.
Then his eyes brightened.

“Yes, sir!”

APT AIN SAM WILEY contin-
ued to stare at the beautiful gray
globe in the visi-screen. He was not
like Gunderson, with boyish eager-
ness and anxiety flowing out of him
in a ceaseless babble. His emotion
was as great, or greater, but it was
imprisoned within him, like swirl-
ing, foaming liquid inside a corked
jug.

It wouldn’t do to encourage the
men too much. Because, if they
were disappointed . . .

He shook his silver-thatched
head. There it was, he thought. A
new world. A world that, perhaps,
held life.

Life. It was a word uttered only
with reverence, for throughout the
Solar System, with the exception
of on Earth, there had been only
death.

First it was the Moon, airless and
lifeless. That had been expected, of
course.

But Mars. For centuries men had
dreamed of Mars and written of
Mars with its canals and dead
cities, with its ancient men and
strange animals. Everyone knew
there was or had been life on Mars.

The flaming rockets reached
Mars, and the canals became vol-
canic crevices, and the dead cities
became jagged peaks of red stone,
and the endless sands were smooth,
smooth, smooth, untouched by feet
of living creatures. There was
plant-life, a species of green-red
lichen in the Polar regions. But no-
where was there real life.

Then Venus, with its dust and
wind. No life there. Not even the
stars to make one think of home.
Only the dust and wind, a dark veil
of death screaming eternally over
hot dry land.

And Jupiter, with its seas of ice;
and hot Mercury, a cracked, with-
ered mummy of a planet, baked as
hard and dry as an ancient walnut
in a furnace.

Next, the airless, rocky asteroids,
and frozen Saturn with its swirling
ammonia snows. And last, the
white, silent worlds, Uranus, Nep-
tune, and Pluto.

World after world, all dead,
with no sign of life, no reminder of
life, and no promise of life.

Thus the loneliness had grown. It
was not a child of Earth. It was
not born in the hearts of those who
scurried along city pavements or of
those in the green fields or of those
in the cool, clean houses.

It was a child of the incredible
distances, of the infinite night, of
emptiness and silence. It was born
in the hearts of the slit-eyed men,
the oldish young men, tlie space-
men.

For without life on other worlds,
where was the sky’s challenge? Why
go on and on to discover only
worlds of death?

The dream of the spacemen

turned from the planets to the stars.
Somewhere in the galaxy or in
other galaxies there had to be life.
Life was a wonderful and precious
thing. It wasn’t right that it should
be confined to a single, tiny planet.
If it were, then life would seem
meaningless. Mankind would be a
freak, a cosmic accident.

And now the Wanderer was on
the first interstellar flight, hurtling
through the dark spaces to Proxima
Centauri. Moving silently, as if mo-
tionless, yet at a speed of 160,000
miles a second. And ahead loomed
the great, gray planet, the only
planet of the sun, growing larger,
larger, each instant. . . .

A GENTLE, murmuring hum
filled the ship. The indicator
lights on the control panel glowed
like a swarm of pink eyes.

“Deceleration compensator ad-
justed for 12 G’s, sir,” reported
Lieutenant Gunderson.

Captain Wiley nodded, still
studying the image of the planet.

“There — there’s something else.
Captain.”

“Yes?”

“It’s Brown, sir. He’s drunk.”
Captain Wiley turned, a scowl
on his hard, lined face. “Drunk?
Where’d he get the stuff?”

“He saved it, sir, saved it for
nine years. Said he was going to
drink it when we discovered life.”
“We haven’t discovered life yet.”
“I know. He said he wouldn’t set
foot on the planet if he was sober.
Said if there isn’t life there, he
couldn’t take it — unless he was
drunk.”

EDWARD W. LUDWIG

Captain Wiley grunted. “All
right.”

They looked at the world.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful. Cap-
tain? Just think — to meet another
race. It wouldn’t matter what they
were like, would it? If they were
primitive, we could teach them
things. If they were ahead of us,
they could teach us. You know
what I’d like? To have someone
meet us, to gather around us. It
wouldn’t matter if they were afraid
of us or even if they tried to kill us.
We’d know that we aren’t alone.”

“I know what you mean,” said
Captain Wiley. Some of his emo-
tion overflowed the prison of his
body. “There’s no thrill in landing
on dead worlds. If no one’s there to
see you, you don’t feel like a hero.”

“That’s it. Captain! That’s why
I came on this crazy trip. I guess
that’s why we all came. I . . .”

Captain Wiley cleared his throat.
“Lieutenant, commence deceler-
ation. 6 G’s.”

“Yes, sir!”

The planet grew bigger, filling
the entire visi-screen.

Someone coughed behind Cap-
tain Wiley.

“Sir, the men would like to look
at the screen. They can’t see the
planet out of the ports yet.” The
speaker was Doyle, the ship’s En-
gineer, a dry, tight-skinned little
man.

“Sure.” Captain Wiley stepped
aside.

Doyle looked, then Parker and
Fong. Just three of them, for Wat-
kins had sliced his wrists the fourth
year out. And Brown was drunk.

As they looked, a realization
came to Captain Wiley. The men

THE LONELY ONES

were getting old. The years had
passed so gradually that he’d never
really noticed it before. Lieutenant
Gunderson had been a kid just out
of Space Academy. Parker and
Doyle and Fong, too, had been in
their twenties. They had been boys.
And now something was gone —
the sharp eyes and sure movements
of youth, the smooth skin and thick,
soft hair.

Now they had become men. And
yet for a few moments, as they
gazed at the screen, they seemed
like happy, expectant children.

“I wish Brown could see this,”
Doyle murmured. “He says now he
isn’t going to get off his couch till
we land and discover life. Says he
won’t dare look for himself.”

“The planet’s right for life,” said
Fong, the dark-faced astro-physi-
cist. “Atmosphere forty per cent
oxygen, lots of water vapor. No
poisonous gases, according to spec-
troscopic analyses. It should be
ideal for life.”

“There is life there,” said Parker,
the radarman. “You know why?
Because we’ve given up eighteen
years of our lives. Nine years to get
here, nine to get back. I’m thirty
now. I was twenty-one when we left
Earth. I gave up all those good
years. They say that you can have
something if you pay enough for it.
Well, we’ve paid for this. There has
to be 3i — a sort of universal justice.
That’s why I know there’s life here,
life that moves and thinks — maybe
even life we can talk to.”

“You need a drink,” said Fong.

“It’s getting bigger,” murmured
Lieutenant Gunderson.

“The Centaurians,” mused
Doyle, half to himself. “What’ll

they be like? Monsters or men? If
Parker’s right about universal jus-
tice, they’ll be men.”

“Hey, where there’s men, there’s
women!” yelled Parker. “A Cen-
taurian woman! Say!”

“Look at those clouds!” ex-
claimed Doyle. “Damn it, we can’t
see the surface.”

“Hey, there! Look there, to the
right! See it? It’s silver, down in a
hole in the clouds. It’s like a city!”
“Maybe it’s just water.”

“No, it’s a city!”

“Bring ’er down. Captain. God,
Captain, bring ’er down fast!”
“Drag Brown in here! He ought
to see this!”

“Canlt you bring ’er down faster.
Captain?”

“Damn it, it « a city!”

“Why doesn’t someone get
Brown?”

“Take to your couches, men,”
said Captain Wiley. “Landing’s apt
to be a bit bumpy. Better strap
yourselves in.”

Down went the rocket, more

slowly now, great plumes of
scarlet thundering from its forward
braking jets. Down, down into soft,
cotton-like clouds, the whiteness
sliding silently past the ports.
Suddenly, a droning voice :

“To those in the ship from the
planet called Earth: Please refrain
from landing at this moment. You
will await landing instructions.”
Parker leaped off his couch,
grasping a stanchion for support.
“That voice! It was human!”
Captain Wiley’s trembling hand
moved over the jet-control panel.
The ship slowed in its descent. The

EDWARD W. LUDWIG

clouds outside the portholes be-
came motionless, a milky whiteness
pressed against the ship.

“The voice!” Parker cried again.
“Am I crazy? Did everyone hear
it?”

Captain Wiley turned away from
the panel. “We heard it, Parker. It
was in our minds. Telepathy.”

He smiled. “Yes, the planet is in-
habited. There are intelligent be-
ings on it. Perhaps they’re more in-
telligent than we are.”

It was strange. The men had
hoped, dreamed, prayed for this
moment. Now they sat stunned, un-
able to comprehend, their tongues
frozen.

“We’ll see them very soon,” said
Captain Wiley, his voice quivering.
“We’ll wait for their directions.”

Breathlessly, they waited.

Captain Wiley’s fingers drummed
nervously on the base of the con-
trol panel. Lieutenant Gunderson
rose from his couch, stood in the
center of the cabin, then returned
to his couch.

Silence, save for the constant,
rumbling roar of the jets which
held the ship aloft.

“I wonder how long it’ll be,”
murmured Fong at last.

“It seems like a long time!” burst
Parker.

“We’ve waited nine years,” said
Captain Wiley. “We can wait a
few more minutes.”

They waited.

“Good Lord!” said Parker.
“How long is it going to be? What
time is it? We’ve been waiting an
hour ! What kind of people are they
down there?”

“Maybe they’ve forgotten about
us,” said Fong.

“That’s it!” cried Parker.
“They’ve forgotten about us! Hey,
you! Down there — you that talked
to us! We’re still here, damn it! We
want to land!”

“Parker,” said Captain Wiley, •
sternly.

Parker sat down on his couch, his
lips quivering.

Then came the voice:

“We regret that a landing is im-
possible at this moment. Our field
is overcrowded, and your vessel is
without priority. You must wait
your turn.”

Captain Wiley stared forward at
nothing. “Whoever you are,” he
whispered, “please understand that
we have come a long way to reach
your planet. Our trip . . .”

“We do not wish to discuss your
trip. You will be notified when
landing space is available.”

Captain Wiley’s body shook.
“Wait, tell us who you are. What
do you look like? Tell us . . .”
“Talking to you is quite difficult.
We must form our thoughts so as
to form word-patterns in your
minds. You will be notified.”

“Wait a minute!” called Captain
Wiley.

No answer.

Captain Wiley straightened in an
effort to maintain dignity.

They waited. . . .

T WAS NIGHT.

The darkness was an impene-
trable blanket, a solid thing, like
thick black velvet glued over the
ports. It was worse than the dark-
ness of space.

Captain Wiley sat before the
control panel, slowly beating his

THE LONELY ONES

fists against the arms of his chair, a
human metronome ticking off the
slow seconds.

Parker stood before a porthole.

“Hey, look. Captain! There’s a
streak of red, like a meteor. And
there’s another!”

Captain Wiley rose, looked out.
“They’re rockets. They’re going to
land. These people are highly ad-
vanced.”

His face became grim. Below
them lay a planet, an intelligent
race hidden beneath clouds and
darkness. What manner of creatures
were they? How great was their
civilization? What marvelous se-
crets had their scientists discovered?
What was their food like, their
women, their whiskey?

The questions darted endlessly
through his mind like teasing
needle-points. All these wondrous
things lay below them, and here
they sat, like starving men, their
hands tied, gazing upon a steaming
but unobtainable dinner. So near
and yet so far.

He trembled. The emotion grew
within him until it burst out as wa-
ter bursts through the cracked wall
of a dam. He became like Parker.

“Why should we wait?” he
yelled. “Why must we land in their
field? Parker! Prepare to release
flares! We’re going down! We’ll
land anywhere — in a street, in the
country. We don’t have to wait for
orders!”

Parker bounced off his couch.
Someone called, “Brown, we’re go-
ing to landl”

A scurrying of feet, the rush of
taut-muscled bodies, the babble of
excited voices.

“We’re going down!”

'‘We’re going down!”

The grumble of the Wanderer’s
jets loudened, softened, spluttered,
loudened again. Vibration filled the
ship as it sank downward.

Suddenly it lurched upward, like
a child’s ball caught in a stream of
rising water. The jolt staggered the
men. They seized stanchions and
bulkhead railings to keep their bal-
ance.

“What the hell?”

Abruptly, the strange movement
ceased. The ship seemed motionless.
There was no vibration.

“Captain,” said Lieutenant Gun-
derson. “There’s no change in alti-
tude. We’re still at 35,000 feet, no
more, no less.”

“We must be going down,” said
Captain Wiley, puzzled. “Kill jets
4 and 6.”

The Lieutenant’s hands flicked
off two switches. A moment later:
“There’s no change. Captain.”
Then came the voice:

“To those in the vessel from the
planet Earth ; Please do not oppose
orders of the Landing Council. You
are the first visitors in the history of
our world whom we have had to
restrain with physical force. You
will be notified when landing space
is available.”

ORNING.

The warm sunlight streamed
into the clouds, washing away the
last shadows and filtering through
the portholes.

The men breakfasted, bathed,
shaved, smoked, sat, twisted their
fingers, looked out the ports. They
were silent men, with dark shadows
about their eyes and with tight.

EDWARD W. LUDWJG

white-lipped mouths.

Frequently, the clouds near them
were cut by swift, dark shapes
swooping downward. The shapes
were indistinct in the cotton-like
whiteness, but obviously they were
huge, like a dozen Wanderers made
into one.

“Those ships are big,” someone
murmured, without enthusiasm.

“It’s a busy spaceport,” grumbled
Captain Wiley.

Thoughts, words, movements
came so slowly it was like walking
under water. Enthusiasm was dead.
The men were automatons, sitting,
waiting, eating, sitting, waiting.

A day passed, and a night.

“Maybe they’ve forgotten us,”
said Fong.

No one answered. The thought
had been voiced before, a hun-
dred times.

Then, at last, the droning words;

“To those in the vessel from the
planet Earth: You will now land.
We will carry you directly over the
field. Then you will descend
straight down. The atmosphere is
suitable to your type of life and is
free of germs. You will not need
protection.”

The men stared at one another.

“Hey,” Doyle said, “did you hear
that? He says we can go down.”

The men blinked. Captain Wiley
swallowed hard. He rose with a
stiff, slow, nervous hesitancy.

“We’re going down,” he mum-
bled, as if repeating the words over
and over in his mind and trying to
believe them.

The men stirred as realization
sprouted and grew. They stirred
like lethargic animals aroused from

the long, dreamless sleep of hiber-
nation.

“We’re going to land,” breathed
Parker, unbelievingly.

The Wanderer moved as though
caught in the grip of a giant, in-
visible hand.

The voice said :

“You may now descend.”

Captain Wiley moved to the jet-
control panel. “Lieutenant!” he
snapped. “Wake up. Let’s go!”

The ship sank downward through
the thick sea of clouds. The men
walked to the ports. A tenseness, an
excitement grew in their faces, like
dying flame being fanned into its
former brilliancy.

Out of the clouds loomed mon-
strous, shining, silver spires and
towers, Cyclopean bridges, gigantic
lake-like mirrors, immense golden
spheres. It was a nightmare world,
a j'ungle of fantastic shape and
color.

The men gasped, whispered,
murmured, the flame of their ex-
citement growing, growing.

“The whole planet is a city!”
breathed Parker.

HUMP!

The Wanderer came to rest
on a broad landing field of light
blue stone. The jets coughed, splut-
tered, died. The ship quivered, then
lay still, its interior charged with
an electric, pregnant silence.

“You first. Captain.” Lieutenant
Gunderson’s voice cracked, and his
face was flushed. “You be the first
to go outside.”

Captain Wiley stepped through
the airlock, his heart pounding. It
was over now — ^all the bewilder-

THE LONELY ONES

ment, the numbness.

And his eyes were shining. He’d
waited so long that it was hard to
believe the waiting was over. But it
was, he told himself. The journey
was over, and the waiting, and now
the loneliness would soon be over.
Mankind was not alone. It was a
good universe after all!

He stepped outside, followed by
Lieutenant Gunderson, then by
Parker, Doyle and Fong.

He rubbed his eyes. This couldn’t
be! A world like this couldn’t exist!
He shook his head, blinked furious-
ly-

“It — it can’t be true,” he mum-
bled to Lieutenant Gunderson.
“We’re still on the ship — dream-
ing.”

The landing field was huge, per-
haps ten miles across, and its sides
were lined with incredible ships,
the smallest of which seemed forty
times as large as the Wanderer.
There were silver ships, golden
ships, black ships, round ships,
transparent ships, cigar-shaped
ships, flat-topped ships.

And scattered over the field were
— creatures.

A few were the size of men, but
most were giants by comparison.
Some were humanoid, some reptil-
ian. Some were naked, some clad
in helmeted suits, some enveloped
with a shimmering, water-like lu-
minescence. The creatures walked,
slithered, floated, crawled.

Beyond the ships and the field lay
the great city, its web-work of tow-
ers, minarets, spheres and bridges
like the peaks of an enormous
mountain range stretching up into
space itself. The structures were
like the colors of a rainbow mixed

in a cosmic paint pot, molded and
solidified into fantastic shapes by a
mad god.

“I — I’m going back to the ship,”
stammered Parker. The whiteness
of death was in his face. “I’m go-
ing to stay with Brown.”

He turned, and then he
screamed.

“Captain, the ship’s moving!”
Silently, the Wanderer was drift-
ing to the side of the field.

The toneless voice said:

“We are removing your vessel so
that other descending ships will not
damage it.”

Captain Wiley shouted into the
air. “Wait! Don’t go away! Help
us! Where can we see you?”

The voice seemed to hesitate. “It
is difficult for us to speak In
thoughts that you understand.”

ILENCE.

Captain Wiley studied the
faces of his men. They were not
faces of conquerors or of trium-
phant spacemen. They were the
faces of dazed, frightened children
who had caught a glimpse of Hell.
He attempted, feebly, to smile.

“All right,” he said loudly, “so
it isn’t like we expected. So no one
came to meet us with brass bands
and ten cent flags. We’ve still suc-
ceeded, haven’t we? We’ve found
life that’s intelligent beyond our
comprehension. What if our own
civilization is insignificant by com-
parison? Look at those beings.
Think of what we can learn from
them. Why, their ships might have
exceeded the speed of ligjfit. They
might be from other galaxies!”
“Let’s find out,” said Parker.

100

EDWARD W. LUDWIG

They strode to the nearest ship,
an immense, smooth, bluish sphere.
Two creatures stood before it,
shaped like men and yet twice the
size of men. They wore white, skin-
tight garments that revealed mus-
cular bodies like those of gods.

The looked at Captain Wiley
and smiled.

One of them pointed toward the
Wanderer. Their smiles widened
and then they laughed.

They laughed gently, under-
standingly, but they laughed.

And then they turned away.

“Talk to them,” Parker urged.

“How?” Beads of perspiration
shone on Captain Wiley’s face.

“Any way. Go ahead.”

Captain Wiley wiped his fore-
head. “We are from Earth, the
third planet . . . .”

The two god-like men seemed an-
noyed. They walked away, ignor-
ing the Earthmen.

Captain Wiley spat. “All right, so
they won’t talk to us. Look at that
city! Think of the things we can see
there and tell the folks on Earth
about! Why, we’ll be heroes!”

“Let’s go,” said Parker, his voice
quavering around the edges.

They walked toward a large, oval
opening in a side of the field, a
hole between mountainous, conical
structures that seemed like the en-
trance to a street.

Suddenly breath exploded from
Captain Wiley’s lungs. His body
jerked back. He fell to the blue
stone pavement.

Then he scrambled erect, scowl-
ing, his hands outstretched. He felt
a soft, rubbery, invisible substance.

“It’s a wall!” he exclaimed.

The voice droned:

“To those of Earth: Beings un-
der the 4th stage of Galactic De-
velopment are restricted to the area
of the landing field. We are sorry.
In your primitive stage it would be
unwise for you to learn the nature
of our civilization. Knowledge of
our science would be abused by
your people, and used for the thing
you call war. We hope that you
have been inspired by what you
have seen. However, neither we nor
the other visitors to our planet are
permitted to hold contact with you.
It is suggested that you and your
vessel depart.”

“Listen, you!” screamed Parker.
“We’ve been nine years getting
here! By Heaven, we won’t leave
now! We’re . . .”

“We have no time to discuss the
matter. Beings under the 4th stage
of Galactic . . .”

“Never mind!” spat Captain
Wiley.

Madness flamed in Parker’s
eyes. “We won’t go! I tell you, we
won’t, we won’t!”

His fists streaked through the air
as if at an invisible enemy. He ran
toward the wall.

He collided with a jolt that sent
him staggering backward, crying,
sobbing, screaming, all at once.

Captain Wiley stepped forward,
struck him on the chin. Parker
crumpled.

They stood looking at his body,
which lay motionless except for the
slow rising and falling of his chest.

“What now, Captain?” asked
Lieutenant Gunderson.

Captain Wiley thought for a few
seconds.

Then he said, “We’re ignorant
country bumpkins, Lieutenant, rid-

THE LONELY ONES

101

ing into the city in a chugging ja-
lopy. We’re stupid savages, trying
to discuss the making of fire with
the creators of atomic energy. We’re
children racing a paper glider
against an atomic-powered jet.
We’re too ridiculous to be noticed.
We’re tolerated — but nothing
more.”

“Shall we go home?” asked
Fong, a weariness in his voice.

Lieutenant Gunderson scratched
his neck. “I don’t think I’d want to
go home now. Gould you bear to
tell the truth about what hap-
pened?”

Fong looked wistfully at the shin-
ing city. “If we told the truth, they
probably wouldn’t believe us.
We’ve failed. It sounds crazy. We
reached Proxima Gentauri and
found life, and yet somehow we
failed. No, I wouldn’t like to go
home.”

“Still, we learned something,”
said Doyle. “We know now that
there is life on worlds beside our
own. Somewhere there must be
other races like ours.”

They looked at each other,
strangely, for a long, long moment.

At last Lieutenant Gunderson
asked, “How far is Alpha Cen-
tauri?”

Captain Wiley frowned. “Alpha
Gentauri?” Through his mind
swirled chaotic visions of colossal
distances, eternal night, and lonely

years. He sought hard to find a
seed of hope in his mind, and yet
there was no seed. There were only
a coldness and an emptiness.
Suddenly, the voice:

“Yes, Men of Earth, we suggest
that you try Alpha Gentauri.”

The men stood silent and numb,
like bewildered children, as the im-
plication of those incredible words
sifted into their consciousness.

Finally Fong said, “Did — did you
hear that? He said . . .”

Captain Sam Wiley nodded, very
slowly. “Yes. Alpha Gentauri.
Alpha Gentauri.”

His eyes began to twinkle, and
then he smiled. . . .

ONWARD sped the Wanderer,
onward through cold, silent in-
finity, on and on, an insignificant
pencil of silver lost in the terrible,
brooding blackness.

Yet even greater than the black-
ness was the flaming hope in the
six men who inhabited the silver
rocket. They moved in hope as fish
move in water. Their lives revolved
in hope as planets revolve in space
and time. They bore their hope
like a jeweled crown, and it was as
much a part of them as sight in
their eyes. Hope was both their
brother and their god.

And there was no loneliness.

THE END

Progress is relative; Senator O’Noonans idea of it was not
particularly scientific. Which would be too bad, if he had
the last word!

Progress Report

By Mark Clifton and Alex Apostoiides

Illustrated by PAUL ORBAN

IT SEEMED to Colonel Jennings
that the air conditioning unit
merely washed the hot air around
him without lowering the tempera-
ture from that outside. He knew it
was partly psychosomatic, com-
pounded of the view of the silvery
spire of the test ship through the
heatwaves of the Nevada landscape
and the knowledge that this was
the day, the hour, and the minutes.

The final test was at hand. The
instrument ship was to be sent out
into space, controlled from this
sunken concrete bunker, to find out
if the flimsy bodies of men could
endure there.

Jennings visualized other bunk-
ers scattered through the area, ob-
servation posts, and farther away
the field headquarters with open
telephone lines to tlie Pentagon, and
beyond that a world waiting for
news of the test — and not everyone
wishing it well.

The monotonous buzz of the field

phone pulled him away from his
fascinated gaze at the periscope
slit. He glanced at his two assistants.
Professor Stein and Major Eddy.
They were seated in front of their
control boards, staring at .the blank
eyes of their radar screens, patient-
ly enduring the beads of sweat on
their faces and necks and hands,
the odor of it .arising from their
bodies. They too were feeling the
moment. He picked up the phone.

“Jennings,” .he said crisply.

“Zero minus one half hour,
Colonel. We start alert count in
fifteen minutes.”

“Right,” Colonel Jennings spoke
softly, showing none of the e.xcite-
ment he felt. He replaced the field
phone on its hook and spoke to the
two men in front of him.

“This is it. Apparently this time
we’ll go through with it.”

Major Eddy’s shoulders hunched
a trifle, as if he were getting set to
have a load placed upon them.

104

MARK CLIFTON and ALEX APOSTOLIDES

Professor Stein gave no indication
that he had heard. His thin body
was stooped over his instrument
bank, intense, alert, as if he were a
runner crouched at the starting
mark, as if he were young again.

Colonel Jennings walked over to
the periscope slit again and peered
through the shimmer of heat to
where the silvery ship lay arrowed
in her cradle. The last few mo-
ments of waiting, with a brassy
taste in his mouth, with the vision
of the test ship before him; these
were the worst.

Everything had been done,
checked and rechecked hours and
days ago. He found himself wish-
ing there were some little thing,
some desperate little error which
must be corrected hurriedly, just
something to break the tension of
waiting.

“You’re all right, Sam, Prof?” he
asked the major and professor un-
necessarily.

“A little nervous,” Major Eddy
answered without moving.

“Of course,” Professor Stein
said. There was a too heavy stress
on the silibant sound, as if the last
traces of accent had not yet been
removed.

“I expect everyone is nervous,
not just the hundreds involved in
this, but everywhere,” Jennings
commented. And then ruefully,
“Except Professor Stein there. I
thought surely I’d see some nerves
at this point, Prof.” He was at-
tempting to make light conversa-
tion, something to break the strain
of mounting buck fever.

“If I let even one nerve tendril
slack, Colonel, I would go to pieces
entirely,” Stein said precisely, in the

way a man speaks who has learned
the language from text books. “So
I do not think of our ship at all. I
think of mankind. I wonder if man-
kind is as ready as our ship. I won-
der if man will do any better on
the planets than he has done here.”
“Well, of course,” Colonel Jen-
nings answered with sympathy in
his voice, “under Hitler and all the
things you went through, I don’t
blame you for being a little bitter.
But not all mankind is like that, you
know. As long as you’ve been in
our country, Professor, you’ve nev-
er looked around you. You’ve been
working on this, never lifting your
head ”

He jerked in annoyance as a
red light blinked over the emer-
gency circuit, and a buzzing, sharp
and repeated, broke into this mo-
ment when he felt he was actually
reaching, touching Stein, as no one
had before.

He dragged the phone toward
him and began speaking angrily
into its mouthpiece before he had
brought it to his lips.

“What the hell’s the matter now?
They’re not going to call it off
again! Three times now, and . . .”
He broke off and frowned as the
crackling voice came through the
receiver, the vein on his temple
pulsing in his stress.

“I beg your pardon. General,” he
said, much more quietly.

The two men turned from their
radar scopes and watched him
questioningly. He shrugged his
shoulders, an indication to them of
his helplessness.

“You’re not going to like this,

PROGRESS REPORT

105

Jim,” the general was saying. “But .
it’s orders from Pentagon. Are you
familiar with Senator O’Noonan?”
“Vaguely,” Jennings answered,
“You’ll be more familiar with
him, Jim. He’s been newly ap-
pointed chairman of the appropria-
tions committee covering our work.
And he’s fought it bitterly from the
beginning. He’s tried every way he
could to scrap the entire project.
When we’ve finished this test, Jim,
we’ll have used up our appropria-
tions to date. Whether we get any
more depends on him.”

“Yes, sir?” Jennings spoke ques-
tioningly. Political maneuvering was
not his problem, that was between
Pentagon and Congress.

“We must have his support, Jim,”
the general explained. “Pentagon
hasn’t been able to win him over.
He’s stubborn and violent in his re-
actions. The fact it keeps him in
the headlines — ^well, of course that
wouldn’t have any bearing. So
Pentagon invited him to come to
the field here to watch the test, hop-
ing that would win him over.” The
general hesitated, then continued.

“I’ve gone a step farther. I felt
if he was actually at the center of
control, your operation, he might
be won over, if he could actually
participate, press the activating key
or something, if the headlines could
show he was working with us, actu-
ally sent the test ship on its
flight. . .”

“General, you can’t,” Jennings
moaned. He forgot rank, every-
thing.

‘Tve already done it, Jim,” the
general chose to ignore the out-
burst. “He’s due there now. I’ll look

to you to handle it. He’s got to be
won over. Colonel. It’s your pro-
ject.” Considering the years that he
and the general had worked to-
gether, the warm accord and in-
formality between them, the use of
Jennings’ title made it an order.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Over,” said the general for-
mally.

“Out,” whispered Jennings.

The two men looked at him ques-
tioningly.

“It seems,” he answered their
look, “we are to have an observer.
Senator O’Noonan.”

“Even in Germany,” Professor
Stein said quietly, “they knew
enough to leave us alone at a criti-
cal moment.”

“He can’t do it, Jim,” Major
Eddy looked at Jennings with
pleading eyes.

“Oh, but he can,” Jennings an-
swered bitterly. “Orders. And you
know what orders are, don’t you,
Major?”

“Yes, sir,” Major Eddy said
stiffly.

Professor Stein smiled ruefully.

Both of them turned back to their
instrum.ent boards, their radar
screens, to the protective obscurity
of subordinates carrying out an as-
signment. They were no longer
three men coming close together,
almost understanding one another
in this moment of waiting, when the
world and all in it had been shut
away, and nothing real existed ex-
cept the silvery spire out there on
the desert and the life of it in the
controls at their fingertips.

“Beep, minus fifteen minutes!”
the first time signal sounded.

106

MARK CLIFTON and ALEX APOSTOLIDES

“ftOLONEL JENNINGS, sir!”
U The senator appeared in the
low doorway and extended a fleshy
hand. His voice was hearty, but
there was no warmth behind his
tones. He paused on the threshold,
bulky, impressive, as if he were
about to deliver an address. But
Jennings, while shaking hands, drew
him into the bunker, pointedly,
causing the senator to raise bushy
eyebrows and stare at him specu-
latively.

“At this point everything runs on
a split second basis, Senator,” he
said crisply. “Ceremony comes after
the test.” His implication was that
when the work was done, the sena-
tor could have his turn in the lime-
light, take all the credit, turn it
into political fodder to be thrown
to the people. But because the man
was chairman of the appropriations
committee, he softened his abrupt-
ness. “If the timing is off even a
small fraction. Senator, we would
have to scrap the flight and start all
over.”

“At additional expense, no
doubt.” The senator could also be
crisp. “Surprises me that the mili-
tary should think of that, however.”

The closing of the heavy doors
behind him punctuated his remark
and caused him to step to the center
of the bunker. Where there had
seemed adequate room before, now
the feeling was one of oppressive
overcrowding.

Unconsciously, Major Eddy
squared his elbows as if to clear
the space around him for the ma-
nipulation of his controls. Professor
Stein sat at his radar screen, quiet,
immobile, a part of the mechan-
isms. He was accustomed to over-

bearing authority whatever politi-
cal tag it might wear at the mo-
ment.

“Beep. Eleven minutes,” the sig-
nal sounded.

“Perhaps you’ll be good enough
to brief me on just what you’re do-
ing here?” the senator asked, and
implied by the tone of his voice
that it couldn’t be very much. “In
layman’s language, Colonel. Don’t
try to make it impressive with tech-
nical obscurities. I want my pro-
gress report on this project to be
understandable to everyone.”

Jennings looked at him in dis-
may. Was the man kidding him?
Explain the zenith of science, the
culmination of the dreams of man
in twenty simple words or less! And
about ten minutes to win over a
man which the Pentagon had failed
to win.

“Perhaps you’d like to sit here.
Senator,” be said courteously.
“When we learned you were com-
ing, we felt yours should be the
honor. At zero time, you press this
key — here. It will be your hand
which sends the test ship out into
space.”

Apparently they were safe. The
senator knew so little, he did not
realize the automatic switch would
close with the zero time signal, that
no hand could be trusted to press
the key at precisely the right time,
that the senator’s key was a dummy.

“Beep, ten,” the signal came
through.

Jennings went back over to the
periscope and peered through the
slit. He felt strangely surprised to
see the silver column of the ship
still there. The calm, the scientific
detachment, the warm thrill of co-

PROGRESS REPORT

107

ordinated effort, all were gone. He
felt as if the test flight itself was
secondary to what the senator
thought about it, what he would
say in his progress report.

He wondered if the senator’s pro-
gress report would compare in any
particular with the one on the ship.
That was a chart, representing as
far as they could tell, the minimum
and maximum tolerances of human
life. If the multiple needles, tracing
their continuous lines, went over the
black boundaries of tolerances, hu-
man beings would die at that point.
Such a progress report, showing the
life-sustaining conditions at each
point throughout the ship’s flight,
would have some meaning. He won-
dered what meaning the senator’s
progress report would have.

He felt himself being pushed
aside from the periscope. There was
no ungentleness in the push, simply
the determined pressure of an ar-
rogant man who was accustomed to
being in the center of things, and
thinking nothing of shoving to get
there. The senator gave him the
briefest of explanatory looks, and
placed his own eye at the periscope
slit.

“Beep, nine,” the signal sounded.

“So that’s what represents two
billion dollars,” the senator said
contemptuously. “That little sliver
of metal.”

“The two billion dollar atomic
bomb was even smaller,” Jennings
said quietly.

The senator took his eye
away from the periscope briefly
and looked at Jennings specu-
latively.

“The story of where all that
money went still hasn’t been told,
he said pointedly. “But the story of
who got away with this tw'o billion
will be different.”

Colonel Jennings said nothing.
The white hot rage mounting with-
in him made it impossible for him
to speak.

The senator straightened up and
walked back over to his chair. He
waved a hand in the direction of
Major Eddy.

“What does that man do?” he
asked, as if the major were not pres-
ent, or was unable to comprehend.

“Major Eddy,” Jennings found
control of his voice, “operates re-
mote control.” He was trying to re-
duce the vast complexity of the op-
eration to the simplest possible lan-
guage.

“Beep, eight,” the signal inter-
rupted him.

“He will guide the ship through-
out its entire flight, just as if he
were sitting in it.”

“Why isn’t he sitting in it?” the
senator asked.

“That’s what the test is for. Sena-
tor.” Jennings felt his voice becom-
ing icy. “We don’t know if space
will permit human life. We don’t
know what’s out there.”

“Best way to find out is for a man
to go out there and see,” the senator
commented shortly. “I want to find
out something, I go look at it my-
self. I don’t depend on charts and
graphs, and folderol.”

The major did not even hunch
his broad shoulders, a characteris-
tic gesture, to show that he had
heard, to show that he wished the
senator was out there in untested
space.

108

MARK CLIFTON and ALEX APOSTOLIDES

“What about him? He’s not even
in uniform!”

“Professor Stein maintains sight
contact on the scope and transmits
the IFF pulse.”

The senator’s eyes flashed again
beneath heavy brows. His lips in-
dicated what he thought of profes-
sors and projects who used them.

“What’s IFF?” he asked.

The colonel looked at him in-
credulously. It was on the tip of
his tongue to ask where the man
had been during the war. He de-
cided he’d better not ask it. He
might learn.

“It stands for Identification —
Friend or Foe, Senator. It’s army
jargon.”

“Beep, seven.”

Seven minutes, Jennings thought,
and here 1 am trying to explain the
culmination of the entire science of
all mankind to a lardbrain in sim-
ple kindergarten words. Well, he’d
wished there was something to
break the tension of the last half
hour, keep him occupied. He had
it.

“You mean the army wouldn’t
know, after the ship got up, wheth-
er it was ours or the enemy’s?” the
senator asked incredulously.

“There are meteors in space.
Senator,” Jennings said carefully.
“Radar contact is all we’ll have out
there. The IFF mechanism recon-
verts our beam to a predetermined
pulse, and it bounces back to us in
a different pattern. That’s the only
way we’d know if we were still on
the ship, or have by chance fas-
tened on to a meteor.”

“What has that got to do with
the enemy?” O’Noonan asked un-
comprehendingly.

Jennings sighed, almost audibly.
“The mechanism was developed
during the war, when we didn’t
know which planes were ours and
which the enemy’s. We’ve simply
adapted it to this use — to save
money. Senator.”

“Humph!” the senator expressed
his disbelief. “Top complicated.
The world has grown too compli-
cated.”

“Beep, six.”

The senator glanced irritably at
the time speaker. It had interrupt-
ed his speech. But he chose to ig-
nore the interruption, that was the
way to handle heckling.

“I am a simple man. I come
from simple parentage. I represent
the simple people, the common
people, the people with their feet
on the ground. And the whole
world needs to get back to the sim-
ple truths and honesties . . . .”
Jennings headed off the cam-
paign speech which might appeal
to the mountaineers of the sena-
tor’s home state, where a man’s ac-
complishments were judged by
how far he could spit tobacco
juice; it had little application in
this bunker where the final test be-
fore the flight of man to the stars
was being tried.

“To us. Senator,” he said gently,
“this ship represents simple truths
and honesties. We are, at this mo-
ment, testing the truths of all that
mankind has ever thought of, the-
orized about, believed of the space
which surrounds the Earth. A farm-
er may hear about new methods of
growing crops, but the only way he
knows whether they’re practical or
not is to try them on his own land.”
The senator looked at him im-

PROGRESS REPORT

109

passively. Jennings didn’t know
whether he was going over or not.
But he was trying.

“All that ship, and all the instru-
ments it contains; those represent
the utmost honesties of the men
who worked on them. Nobody tried
to bluff, to get by with shoddy
workmanship, cover up ignorance.
A farmer does not try to bluff his
land, for the crops he gets tells the
final story. Scientists, too, have sim-
ple honesty. They have to have,
Senator, for the results will show
them up if they don’t.”

The senator looked at him

speculatively, and with a grow-
ing respect. Not a bad speech, that.
Not a bad speech at all. If this tom-
foolery actually worked, and it
might, that could be the approach
in selling it to his constituents. By
implication, he could take full
credit, put over the impression that
it was he who had stood over the
scientists making sure they were as
honest and simple as the mountain
farmers. Many a man has gone into
the White House with less.

“Beep, five.”

Five more minutes. The sudden
thought occurred to O’Noonan:
what if he refused to press the
dummy key? Refused to take part
in this project he called tomfool-
ery? Perhaps they thought they
were being clever in having him
take part in the ship’s launching,
and were by that act committing
him to something ....

“This is the final test, Senator.
After this one, if it is right, man
leaps to the stars!” It was Jen-
nings’ plea, his final attempt to

catch the senator up in the fire and
the dream.

“And then more yapping colon-
ists wanting statehood,” the senator
said dryly. “Upsetting the balance
of power. Changing things.”

Jennings was silent.

“Beep, four.”

“More imports trying to get into
our country duty-free,” O’Noonan
went on. “Upsetting our economy.”

His vision was of lobbyists threat-
ening to cut off contributions if
their own industries were not kept
in a favorable position. Of grim-
jawed industrialists who could easily
put a more tractable candidate up
in his place to be elected by the
free and thinking people of his
state. All the best catch phrases, the
semantically-loaded promises, the
advertising appropriations being
used by his opponent.

It was a dilemma. Should he
jump on the bandwagon of ad-
vancement to the stars, hoping to
catch the imagination of the voters
by it? Were the voters really in
favor of progress? What could this
space flight put in the dinner pails
of the Smiths, the Browns, the
Johnsons? It was all very well to
talk about the progress of mankind,
but that was the only measure to
be considered. Any politician knew
that. And apparently no scientist
knew it. Man advances only when
he sees how it will help him stuff
his gut.

“Beep, three.” For a full minute,
the senator had sat lost in specula-
tion.

And what could he personally
gain? A plan, full-formed, sprang
into his mind. This whole ded
could be taken out of the hands of

MARK CLIFTON and ALEX APOSTOLIDES-

the military on charges of waste
and corruption. It could be brought
back into the control of private in-
dustry, where it belonged. He
thought of vast tracts of land in his
own state, tracts he could buy
cheap, through dummy companies,
places which could be made very
suitable for the giant factories
necessary to manufacture space-
ships.

As chairman of the appropria-
tions committee, it wouldn’t be
difficult to sway the choice of site.
And all that extra employment for
the people of his own state. The
voters couldn’t forget plain, simple,
honest O’Noonan after that!

“Beep, two.”

JENNINGS FELT the sweat
beads increase on his forehead.
His collar was already soaking wet.
He had been watching the senator
through two long minutes, terrible
eon-consuming minutes, the impas-
sive face showing only what the
senator wanted it to show. He saw
the face now soften into something
approaching benignity, nobility.
The head came up, the silvery hair
tossed back.

“Son,” he said with a ringing
thrill in his voice. “Mankind much
reach the stars! We must allow
nothing to stop that! No personal
consideration, no personal belief,
nothing must stand in the way of
mankind’s greatest dream!”

His eyes were shrewdly watching
the effect upon Jennings’ face,

; measuring through him the effect
such a speech would have upon the
voters. He saw the relief spread
over Jennings’ face, the glow. Yes,

it might work.

“Now, son,” he said with kindly
tolerance, “tell me what you want
me to do about pressing this key
when the time comes.”

“Beep, one.”

And then the continuous drone
while the seconds were being count-
ed off aloud.

“Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-
seven — ”

The droning went on while Jen-
nings showed the senator just how
to press the dummy key down, ex-
plaining it in careful detail, and
just when.

“Thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-
five — ”

“Major!” Jennings called ques-
tioningly.

“Ready, sir.”

“Professor!”

“Ready, sir.”

“Three, two, one, ZERO!”

“Press it. Senator!” Jennings
called frantically.

Already the automatic firing
stud had taken over. The bellow-
ing, roaring flames reached down
with giant strength, nudging the
ship upward, seeming to hang sus-
pended, waiting.

“Press it!”

The senator’s hand pressed the
dummy key. He was committed.

As if the ship had really been
waiting, it lifted, faster and faster.

“Major?”

“I have it, sir.” The major’s
hands were flying over his bank of
controls, correcting the slight un-
balance of thrusts, holding the ship
as steady as if he were in it.

Already the ship was beyond
visual sight, picking up speed. But
the pip on the radar screens was

PROGRESS REPORT

111

strong and clear. The drone of the
IFF returning signal was equally
strong.

The senator sat and waited. He
had done his job. He felt it per-
haps would have been better to
have had the photographers on the
spot, but realized the carefully di-
rected and rehearsed pictures to be
taken later would make better vote
fodder.

“It’s already out in space now,
Senator,” Jennings found a second
of time to call it to the senator.

The pips and the signals were
bright and clear, coming through
the ionosphere, the Heaviside layer
as they had been designed to do.
Jennings wondered if the senator
could ever be made to understand
the simple honesty of scientists who
had worked that out so well and
true. Bright and strong and clear.

And then there was nothing! The
screens were blank. The sounds
were gone.

ENNINGS STOOD in stupefied

silence.

“It shut! It shut off!” Major
Eddy’s voice was shrill in amaze-
ment.

“It cut right out. Colonel. No
fade, no dying signal, just out!” It
was the first time Jennings had ever
heard a note of excitement in Pro-
fessor Stein’s voice.

The phone began to ring, loud
and shrill. That would be from the
General’s observation post, where
he, too, must have lost the signal.

The excitement penetrated the
senator’s rosy dream of vast acre-
ages being sold at a huge profit,
giant walls of factories going up

under his remote-control owner-
ship. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Jennings did not answer him.
“What was the altitude?” he asked.
The phone continued to ring, but
he was not yet ready to answer it.

“Hundred fifty miles, maybe a
little more,” Major Eddy answered
in a dull voice. “And then, noth-
ing,” he repeated incredulously.
“Nothing.”

The phone was one long ring
now, taken off of automatic signal
and rung with a hand key pressed
down and held there. In a daze,
Jennings picked up the phone.

“Yes, General,” he answered as
though he were no more than a
robot. He hardly listened to the
general’s questions, did not need
the report that every radarscope
throughout the area had lost con-
tact at the same instant. Somehow
he had known that would be true,
that it wasn’t just his own mechan-
isms failing. One question did
penetrate his stunned mind.

“How is the senator taking it?”
the general asked finally.

“Uncomprehending, as yet,” Jen-
nings answered cryptically. “But
even there it will penetrate sooner
or later. We’ll have to face it then.”
“Yes,” the general sighed. “What
about safety? What if it fell on a
big city, for example?”

“It had escape velocity,” Jen-
nings answered. “It would simply
follow its trajectory indefinitely —
which was away from Earth.”
“What’s happening now?” the
senator asked arrogantly. He had
been out of the limelight long
enough, longer than was usual or
necessary. He didn’t like it when
people went about their business as

112

MARK CLIFTON and ALEX APOSTOLIDES

if he were not present.

“Quiet during the test, Senator,”
Jennings took his mouth from the
phone long enough to reprove the
man gently. Apparently he got
away with it, for the senator put
his finger to his lips knowingly and
sat back again.

“The senator’s starting to ask
questions?” the general asked into
the phone.

“Yes, sir. It won’t be long now.”

“I hate to contemplate it, Jim,”
the general said in apprehension.
“There’s only one way he’ll trans-
late it. Two billion dollars shot up
into the air and lost.” Then sharply.
“There must be something you’ve
done. Colonel. Some mistake you’ve
made.”

The implied accusation struck
at Jennings’ stomach, a heavy
blow.

“That’s the way it’s going to be?”
he stated the question, knowing its
answer.

“For the good of the service,” the
general answered with a stock
phrase. “If it is the fault of one
officer and his men, we may be
given another chance. If it is the
failure of science itself, we won’t.”
“I see,” the colonel answered.
“You won’t be the first soldier,
Colonel, to be unjustly punished to
maintain public faith in the serv-
ice.”

“Yes, sir,” Jennings answered as
formally as if he were already fac-
ing court martial.

“It’s back!” Major Eddy shout-
ed in his excitement. “It’s back,
Colonel!”

The pip, truly, showed startlingly

clear and sharp on the radarscope,
the correct signals were coming in
sure and strong. As suddenly as the
ship had cut out, it was back.

“It’s back, General,” Colonel
Jennings shouted into the phone,
his eyes fixed upon his own radar-
scope. He dropped the phone with-
out waiting for the general’s an-
swer.

“Good,” exclaimed the senator.
“I was getting a little bored with
nothing happening.”

“Have you got control?” Jen-
nings called to the major.

“Can’t tell yet. It’s coming in too
fast. I’m trying to slow it. ’We’ll
know in a minute.”

“You have it now,” Professor
Stein spoke up quietly. “It’s slow-
ing. It will be in the atmosphere
soon. Slow it as much as you can.”

As surely as if he were sitting in
its control room, Eddy slowed the
ship, easing it down into the atmos-
phere. The instruments recorded
the results of his playing upon the
bank of controls, as sound pouring
from a musical instrument.

“At the take-off point?” Jen-
nings asked. “Can you land it
there?”

“Close to it,” Major Eddy an-
swered. “As close as I can.”

Now the ship was in visual sight
again, and they watched its nose
turn in the air, turn from a bullet
hurtling earthward to a ship set-
tling to the ground on its belly.
Major Eddy was playing his instru-
ment bank as if he were the soloist
in a vast orchestra at the height of
a crescendo forte.

Jennings grabbed up the phone
again.

“Transportation!” he shouted.

PROGRESS REPORT

113

“Already dispatched, sir,” the
operator at the other end respond-
ed.

^ Through the periscope slit, Jen-
nings watched the ship settle light-
ly downward to the ground, as
though it were a breezeborne
feather instead of its tons of metal.
It seemed to settle itself, still, and
become inanimate again. Major
Eddy dropped his hands away from
his instrument bank, an exhausted
virtuoso.

“My congratulations!” the sena-
tor included all three men in his
sweeping glance. “It was remark-
able how you all had control at ev-
ery instance. My progress report
will certainly bear that notation.”

The three men looked at him,
and realized there was no irony in
his words, no sarcasm, no realiza-
tion at all of what had truly hap-
pened.

“I can see a va-a-ast fleet of
no-o-ble ships . . . the senator be-
gan to orate.

But the roar of the arriving jeep
outside took his audience away
from him. They made a dash for
the bunker door, no longer inter-
ested in the senator and his progress
report. It was the progress report
as revealed by the instruments on
the ship which interested them
more.

The senator was close behind
them as they piled out of the bunk-
er door, and into the jeep, with
Jennings unceremoniously pulling
the driver from the wheel and tak-
ing his place.

Over the rough dirt road toward
the launching site where the ship
had come to rest, their minds were
bemused and feverish, as they pro-

jected ahead, trying to read in ad-
vance what the instruments would
reveal of that blank period.

The senator’s mind projected
even farther ahead to the fleet of
space ships he would own and con-
trol. And he had been worried
about some ignorant stupid voters!
Stupid animals! How he despised
them! What would he care about
voters when he could be master of
the spaceways to the stars?

Jennings swerved the jeep off
the dirt road and took out across
the hummocks of sagebrush to the
ship a few rods away. He hardly
slacked speed, and in a swirl of
dust pulled up to the side of the
ship. Before it had even stopped,
the men were piling out of the jeep,
running toward the side of the ship.

And stopped short.

UNABLE TO BELIEVE their
eyes, to absorb the incredible,
they stared at the swinging open
door in the side of the ship. Slowly
they realized the iridescent purple
glow around the doorframe, the
rotted metal, disintegrating and
falling to the dirt below. The im-
plications of the tampering with
the door held them unmoving.
Only the senator had not caught it
yet. Slower than they, now he was
chugging up 'to where they had
stopped, an elephantine amble.

“Well, well, what’s holding us
up?” he panted irritably.

Cautiously then, Jennings moved
toward the open door. And as cau-
tiously, Major Eddy and Professor
Stein followed him. O’Noonan hung
behind, sensing the caution, but not
knowing the reason behind it.

114

MARK CLIFTON and ALEX APOSTOLIDES

They entered the ship, wary of
what might be lurking inside, what
had burned open the door out
there in space, what had been able
to capture the ship, cut it off from
its contact with controls, stop it in
its headlong flight out into space,
turn it, return it to their controls at
precisely the same point and alti-
tude. Wary, but they entered.

At first glance, nothing seemed
disturbed. The bulkhead leading to
the power plant was still whole.
But farther down the passage, the
door leading to the control room
where the instruments were housed
also swung open. It, too, showed
the iridescent purple disintegration
of its metal frame.

They hardly recognized the con-
trol room. They had known it in-
timately, had helped to build and
fit it. They knew each weld, each
nut and bolt.

“The instruments are gone,” the
professor gasped in awe.

It was true. As they crowded
there in the doorway, they saw the
gaping holes along the walls where
the instruments had been inserted,

one by one, each to tell its own
story of conditions in space.

The senator pushed himself into
the room and looked about him.
Even he could tell the room had
been dismantled.

“What kind of sabotage is this?”
he exclaimed, and turned in anger
toward Jennings. No one answered
him. Jennings did not even bother
to meet the accusing eyes.

They walked down the narrow
passage between the twisted frames
where the instruments should have
been. They came to the spot where
the master integrator should have
stood, the one which should have
co-ordinated all the results of life-
sustenance measurements, the one
which was to give them their prog-
ress report.

There, too, was a gaping hole —
but not without its message. Etched
in the metal frame, in the same
iridescent purple glow, were two
words. Two enigmatic words to re-
verberate throughout the world,
burned in by some watcher — some
keeper — some warden.

“Not yet”

THE END

THE NEXT ISSUE will contain another exceptionally fine line-up of
stories. In addition to A CASE OF CONSCIENCE by James Blish, you’ll
find THY ROCKS AND RILLS by Robert E. Gilbert. It’s a vision of the
Manly Age in Earth’s not-too-distant future, complete with legal duels,
destructive “thrill parties”, subjugated women, and such pleasant diver-
sions as bullfights — but what happens when an intelligent mutant bull en-
ters the picture is moderately world-shaking. W. W. Skupeldyckle presents
a new approach to science fiction in THE ROMANTIC ANALOGUE;
James McKimmey, Jr., [the find of ’53) tells about a PLANET OF
DREAMS; and there will be top-notch stories by Jerome Bixby, Philip K.
Dick, and others.

On earth and in space. Humanity was the bene-
ficiary of DornoTs great experiments, for it sup-
plied—

The GUINEA PIGS

By S. A. Lombino

ND WHICH two shall be the
guinea pigs this time?” Krai
asked, a touch of bitterness, tinging
his voice.

Dornal smiled a crooked smile,
and stroked the carefully trimmed
beard that clung to his fine jaw. His
right eyebrow lifted ever so slightly,
and his blue eyes twinkled with
faint puzzlement.

“Surely you’re not concerned?”
he asked Krai.

“Excuse me,” Krai said sarcas-
tically, “I lost my head.”

He turned on his heel, presenting
the broad back of his yellow tunic
to Dornal, strode rapidly toward
the .plasteel door at the far end of
the chamber.

“Just a moment!” Dornal’s voice
cracked like a whip.

Krai turned to face his superior
officer. “Yes?” he asked.

“I’m not sure I like your atti-
tude,” Dornal said. The smile had
vanished from his lips. He stood
now, tall, proud, regal. The black-
ness of his thick, flowing hair and

his short beard framed the perfect
oval of his face. His brows were
knitted in consternation, and the
eyes that examined Krai were cold
— and a little cruel.

Krai met Dornal’s eyes with his
own and slowly said, “And I’m not
sure I like yours either.”

Dornal’s hand dropped auto-
matically to the stun gun hanging
in the plastic holster at his waist.
He seemed to think better of it,
looped his thumb into his belt in-
stead. Again, he smiled charmingly,
his teeth flashing in a white, even
grin.

“Krai,” he said, “don’t be a
fool.”

“Damnit, I’m not being a fool!”
Krai shouted. “I’m just getting fed
up. God, how much longer is this
going to go on, this indiscriminate
use of human beings as — ”

“You’re upset,” Dornal said, not
unkindly. “Borrow a ship, take a
hop to the Moon. It’ll do you good.
Spend a little . . .”

“I don’t need a pleasure cruise

115

116

S. A. LOMBINO

to the Moon. It’d only remind me
of the guinea pigs who made that
trip possible.”

“All right then, Krai, what do
you want?”

“I want to resign,” Krai said
evenly. “I want to resign from your
service. You can get a ne.w assistant.
I want to leave your whole stinking
government to you. You alone. I
want you to handle all of your own
rotten experiments. I want to . .

“That’s enough!” Dornal’s stun
gun was in his hand now. With a
quick motion of his other hand,
Domal flicked the potency lever on
the gun. Krai knew it was up full
now, and Dornal would shoot to
kill.

“Go on,” he said. “Squeeze the
trigger.”

“I hope you’re not daring me.
Krai.” Dornal’s voice was cold.

Krai suddenly spread his arms in
despair. “Dornal, look, there are
other ways. Man had other ways
before you . . . before we began to
tamper. Science was beginning to
solve its own problems. It was just
a matter of ...”

“It was a matter of decadence,”
Dornal interrupted. “Before I be-
came Chief, science was floundering
about in its own offal. Who cured
cancer? Who defeated polio? Who
reached the Moon? And Mars?
Venus? Who, Krai, who?”

“Do you think you did? Do you
think for one minute it was you,
Dornal?”

“Yes,” Dornal answered proudly.
“It was. Krai. It was I who made
these things possible. Before me,
there was stupidity and blind senti-
ment. They depended on volun-
teers, and when they had no

volunteers they had to fumble
around with animals. By conscrip-
tion of human beings these wonder-
ful things have been made possible.
Now, when we are on the verge of
another great experiment, you show
your chicken heart!”

“Another experiment that will
kill more people,” Krai added.

“Perhaps,” Dornal admitted.
“Perhaps. It doesn’t matter. Per-
haps they’ll be successful the first
time, and then no one would be
lost.”

Krai spat in disgust. “Did they
cure cancer the first time? How
many humans did you murder to
discover the cause of cancer?”
“And how many did we save by
discovering the cause and bringing
about a cure?”

“Don’t say ‘we’; It was all your
doing.”

“On the contrary,” Dornal said.
“It was our doing.”

“How many space ships did you
send out into the blackness before
we reached the Moon?” Krai per-
sisted. “And then Mars and Venus?
How many lives did you throw
away?”

“I must remind you,” Dornal
said softly, “that I rule this uni-
verse. You are only my assistant, a
position granted by my grace. I do
what is best for the population.”
“And I help,” Krai said.

“Yes. You help.”

“Who are you to say that so
many people must die to make
things easier for those who survive
them? No one has that power, Dor-
nal. No one but . . .”

“God,” Dornal finished. “No one
but God.”

Krai’s lips tightened across his

THE GUINEA PIGS

117

face. He turned to go.

“I wasn’t aware I’d dismissed
you,” Dornal snapped.

Krai turned to face Domal.
“Sir?” he asked.

“The new ship leaves tomorrow
at oh-two-hundred. I’ll need only
two men to man her. Good men,
Krai. This isn’t going to be the
usual hop. We’re reaching for the
stars this time — ^we’re going to ex-
plore a new universe. Once we
break the chains that bind us to our
own solar system, nothing can stop
us. Nothing!”

“You’ll have your two men, sir,”
Krai said. “Will that be all, sir?”

“Dismissed,” Dornal said. He
slipped his stun gun back into its
holster as Krai opened the plasteel
door and left the chamber.

The enormous ship stood

on spidery legs, nose pointed
skyward. The sand spread out be-
neath it, bathed in the bluish light
of the stars. Domal glanced up-
wards, his eyes darting from one
pinpoint of light to the next. The
slow smile crossed his face again,
and his fingers ran smoothly
through his short, immaculate
beard.

Impatiently, he glanced at his
wrist-chron. The ship was set for
blastoff at oh-two-hundred. It was
now oh-one-fifty and there was still
no sign of Krai.

From the control tower, a loud-
speaker blared, “Red minus five.
Red minus five.”

The ground car screeched onto
the desert sand, and Krai stepped
out, waiting for the two young men
to follow him. Together, they took

long strides across the sand to where
Domal was standing.

“I knew you wouldn’t fail me,”
he said to Krai.

“Two more or less,” Krai
shrugged. “What’s the difference
now?”

“Exactly,” Domal agreed. “Two
more or less.”

“Red minus three” the speaker
blared. “Red minus three.”

“We’d better get aboard and
show the men the ship, sir,” Krai
said. “They’ll be blasting off in
eight minutes.”

“Yes, yes,” Dornal said. He
glanced upwards at the stars as he
mounted the ladder to the nose
turret. Krai followed Dornal, but
not too closely. Behind him were
the two chosen men. They were
strangely silent, a little pale.

“Red minus one” the speaker
announced.

With a powerful backward
thrust, Krai kicked the man behind
him. There was a short grunt of
surprise, as the first man tumbled
backwards, down the ladder, carry-
ing the second man with him. They
rolled over in the sand as Krai raced
up the remaining rungs and into
the turret.

“Red condition,” the speaker
warned. “Green minus five.”

Krai snapped the hatch shut and
twisted the lock wheel. Dornal was
peering up out of the blister, his
back to Krai. “Soon it will all be
mine,” he said, scanning the uni-
vcrs6.

“Yes,” Krai agreed.

Somewhere below, the powerful
turbo-jets hummed into action,
building power. The sound jostled
Dornal. He turned to face Krai.

118

5. A. LOMBINO

“Green minus three” the speaker
announced.

Krai felt the ship tremble with
the increasing power of the jets. In
less than three minutes, the ship
would be hurled into space, hurled
into unknown universes. A look of
surprise crossed Dornal’s face as he
stared around the cabin. “Where
are the pilots? What’s . .

He noticed the strained look on
Krai’s face then.

“Green minus two. Standby for
blastoff.”

“What are you . . . ?”

“What’s two more or less?” Krai

shouted. Dornal reached for the
space lock, fear marking his face.

The desert sands began to glow
red and yellow as the jets spewed
flame into the darkness.

“Green minus one.”

Dornal clawed at the lock wheel
frantically. Krai smashed his fist
into Dornal’s hysterical features,
and the other man crumpled to the
deck.

In another second, the force of
acceleration threw Krai down un-
conscious beside the other man. Si-
lently, the ship streaked for the
stars.

THE END

IRRESISTIB.LE WEAPON

(Continued from page 31 )

accuracy, the colonel put the ship
into subspace drive.

Korman leaned back at the con-
clusion of the brief activity on his
control board, and met Gibson’s
pop-eyed stare.

“Interesting, the things worth
knowing,” he commented. “How to
make a weapon, for instance, or
whether your enemy has it yet.”

He almost smiled at his prison-
er’s expression.

“Or even better: knowing ex-
actly how far your enemy has pro-
gressed and how fast he can con-
tinue, whether to stop him im-
mediately or whether you can re-
main a step ahead.”

“B-but — if both sides are irre-
sistible . . .” Gibson stammered.

Korman examined him con-
temptuously.

“No irresistible weapon exists, or
ever will!” he declared. “Only an
irresistible process — the transmis-
sion of secrets! You are living proof
that no safeguards can defend
against that.”

He savored Gibson’s silent dis-
comfort.

“I am sure you know how far
and how fast the Centaurian scien-
tists will go, Gibson, since I guided
you to every laboratory in that
plant. Your memory may require
some painful jogging when we
reach the Solar System; but re-
member you shall!”

“But you — you were ordered
to . . .”

“You didn’t think I was a Cen-
taurian, did you?” sneered Kor-
man. “After I just explained to you
what is really irresistible?”

THE END

I I

I COMETH I

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiu

TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Dear Friends:

I was introduced to IP with the
January 1953 issue and was very
pleasantly surprised. I am tempted
to give IF the edge over
ASTOUNDING for the highest
level of intelligence in the science
fiction field, but you realize how
unfair this would be to John
Campbell and/or the publishers of
ASTOUNDING, inasmuch as my
judgment would be based on only
one issue of IF. I must read at
least 60 or 70 issues of IF, before
I come to so momentous a decision.
Well, at least two or three issues,
anyway.

My favorite story in the January
issue was Walter Miller’s CHECK
AND CHECKMATE. Not only
was it a good story with an un-
usual twist, but I think it took
courage to write and courage to
publish it. I admire and respect all
concerned for it.

I also liked Rog Phillips’ YE OF
LITTLE FAITH, but was left
somewhat baffled as to what Rog
was trying to tell. Is he “fer or
agin” belief (faith) ? The title and

the structure of the story seem to
imply that he’s “fer,” but I got the
distinct impression that he is a
whopping logician with his tongue
in his cheek.

Although Rog does not elabo-
rate on Martin Grant’s theory, I
think I know one answer (and I
imagine there is room for more) to
the enigmatic disappearances. To
me, it is a very “obvious further
step” in logic, as Rog makes Grant
suspect there “must” be.

Martin Grant’s theory “contains
within itself the proof that the uni-
verse must, by logical necessity, be
constructed according to said

theory. But observation and experi-
ence say this is not true.” Martin
Grant conjectures, “Either the uni-
verse is not constructed acording
to logical necessity, or, the observ-
able universe is not the universe.”

Now, assuming that Grant’s
theory was that the universe is
an illusion, it follows (if I ac-
cept this theory) that MY

OWN EXISTENCE is part of
that very same illusion! Illu-

sion and existence become syn-
onymous. The moment “I” become
“aware” of this “fact,” pop goes
the illusion AND, therefore, my ex-
istence. The “logical necessity” is,
logically, the simultaneity of the
illusion-existence of universe and
self. To be or not to be applies to
the sum total. It is indivisible.
Simple.

Grant’s statement, “observation
and experience says this is not true”
was correct prior to his own disap-
pearance, but to him alone. It re-
mained correct to each individual
only to the point of the individual’s

120

THE POSTMAN COMETH

disappearance. Naturally, Grant’s
conjectures are meaningless.

— George Fedak
Uniondale, N. Y.

We like you, Mr. Fedak, and want
you to read at least 60 or 70 issues
of IF. Please don’t get too involved
in this puzzle and disappear your-
self!

THE PLANETS, YES
Dear Editor:

You state that space travel will
not appear before the year 2000.
That’s all well and good, but then
you go on to say that man has to
have the driving force of animal
survival before he leaves the earth.
You then state that there is still
millions of inhabitable miles be-
fore the earth will be overcrowded.
By your own reasoning you seem
to think the only motivation for
man to leave earth, is that of his
own survival. You are absolutely
wrong.

An overcrowded America was
not the reason that explorers went
into the deepest parts of Africa,
into the unexplored sections of the
Amazon, into forbidden Tibet.

The three basic motives that will
make man venture into space are
Adventure, Curiosity and a Chal-
lenge. Adventure and Curiosity are
self explanatory. I’ll explain the
third and most important motive, a
Challenge.

The challenge of going where
no other human has ever been be-
fore, the challenge of standing on
an alien planet where no other hu-
man foot has ever trod, the chal-

lenge of meeting and establishing
contact with alien life forms, these
challenges and many more will
drive man on to the planets and
finally to the stars.

Adventure, Curiosity, and the
Challenge will send man out into
space, not survival.

— Lyle Kessler
Philadelphia, Pa.

A nice, idealistic concept — and the
sort of idea that makes science fic-
tion possible, for which we’re
thankful! But some challenges do
go unanswered. Africa, the Ama-
zon, Tibet presented purely practi-
cal motives too, and besides could
be attacked by individuals; space
is going to take organization and
an awful lot of money. But we’ll
make it yet!

LOST: FIVE YEARS

Dear Mr. Quinn:

YE QF LITTLE FAITH by
Rog Phillips was tops.

However, his factual research
was lacking. On page 50, Rog
(Curt) states, “Your father can’t
be declared legally, ah, departed
for two years.” (The underscore is
mine.) Being an ex-insurance
man for many long years, indirect-
ly connected with legal adjustments
and actuarial departments, I am
positive that vanished persons are
not declared legally dead until sev-
en years have passed.

This factual error might detract
reader interest with many fantasy
fans and this, I know, Rog Phillips
would not want done.

— Elmer R. Kirk

VENUS is covered by a heavy blanket af clouds which obscures the planet's
surface, making conditions there a matter for speculation. No water vapar
or oxygen can be detected in Venus' atmosphere, but there is an abun-
dance of carbon dioxide. The spaceship shown is traveling in a power-off
attitude, but will make a tail-first landing under power — if it finds anything
to land on! (Drawings by Ed Valigursky)

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